Andrewmc

I got this plans and woodpack from Traplet a couple of years ago and have now cleared space to get stuck in. The "kit consists of 4 sheets of full size plans, CNC cut sheets of wing ribs and fuselage formers, fibre glass cowl and turtle deck and scale balloon wheels and hubcaps. All other balsa and hardwood stringers and hardware needs to be purchased separatly or fabricated - I like this concept as invariably I have replaced most of the hardware supplied with full kits anyway.

After splicing 6mm sq x 1m long spruce, to 6mm sq x 1m long balsa to make the fuselage stringers I layed it out over the plans and noticed that the stringer representation on the plans was much bigger than the 6mm wood that was referenced. I decided to use the outside line as the reference and got to work.

Having a mitre sander really makes short work of the warren truss fuselage sides.

6 hours into the build and I have now framed up both sides, one built on top of the other, and sliced apart.

I gave each half a light sand to correct for minor differences in wood thickness (mixture of 1/4" and 6mm sections - what happens when you live at the bottom end of Africa 10,000 miles from civilisation)

I started to assemble the engine box for use with a laser 180 engine and have a couple of questions I would like to confirm before cutting anything:

The carburetor on the laser is at the back and close to the rocker cover end of the piston barrel, as the engine will be inverted the fuel tank will need to drop relative to the carb position. I assume that even though the carb is positioned much lower than other makes of 4 stroke the same rules of tank positioning apply, i.e. centre line of tank on centre line of carb spray bar? This would position the tank just off the engine box floor - plenty of space just want to confirm.

Secondly the laser 180 is 148mm from prop driver to inlet of carb, from the face of the firewall to the recommended position of the prop driver is 148mm, this gives only a clearance of 3mm behind the exhaust stack and carb intake (giving 3mm cleaance on the cowl). Is this enough or should I move the firewall back 10mm or so?

Extra Fury

Hi Andrew,

I cant answer your questions, but how is the Tiggy build going?? I want to get my own DH82a 1/4 scale build going very soon, hopefully started before end of 2010.

I'm thining of the Flair kit. Are you doing the Traplet full kit or Short kit?

Some pics??

Reg. EF

Andrewmc

I have the short kit, I did not know that there was a full kit, certainly when I got mine there wasn't. It does come with a fibreglass cowl, turtledeck and scale fuel tank - but no hardware or balsa sheet or stringers.

The Duncan Hutson design is a lot more scale than the flair kit and I have heard nothing but good reports about it, I have however bought the flair undercarriage assembly kit to go with it - bending wire accuratly has not been my forte.

At the moment the sides are framed up and I am attending to the engine mounting and positioning. So far so good.

I will get some pics up a bit latter, including the fibreglass bits - great quality stuff.

Andrewmc

I have assembled the engine box which includes the front fuselage former. I needed to shorten the side walls by 10mm to accomodate the laser 180 engine. Also at this stage I cut out the opening for the fuel tank at the appropriate location relative to the carb.

Joining the fuselage sides to the engine box took a couple of attempts as I thought the fuselage ended up "out of square" after I had glued the firewall at the front and the former behind the cockpit. It turned out that after the second attempt when I placed a square on the firewall wrt the sides all was square but when a square was place on the rear of cockpit former it indicated a runout of about 0.5mm. This bothered me as I had braced this former with gussets prior to gluing. As an afterthought I checked the backside of the rear cockpit former which was perfectly square - Could it be that the lite ply former is not parallel face to face?

Andrewmc

I have now pulled the fuselage sides together by cutting a notch in the spruce spars to allow them to bend and then adding the upper and lower braces and the diagonals.

The end is not closed yet as the tail fin post forms the closure and therefore I need to build the fin first.

I have built the fin and rudder which required a 3x3mm edge beading around the leading edge and a 1.5x3mm around the trainling edges. This was done by laminating two 1.5x 3mm strips around the leading edge usin CA. For the trainling edge I inserted pins around the curvature of the TE and then slowly bit by bit CA'd the edge strip to the TE.

Sounds long winded but actually was not too difficult.

Andrewmc

Next up was to add the undercarriage. I have never been good at acurately bending wire and this plane calls for some heavy guage stuff so I opted to buy the Tiger Moth undercarriage kit from Flair Models in the UK. I may not need to bend but I will certainly get soldering practice

Bundubasher

Andrew,
I'm sure you will enjoy building and flying your Moth. Keep us posted.
See attached pics of my old girl.

Cheers

Bundu

Andrewmc

Hi Bundu, thanks for looking in. Did you build your moth from a kit or plans?

Andrewmc

I originally bought the Flair undercarriage kit because I didn't like the idea of accurately bending all that 6 swg wire. After I opened the packet and laid out the pieces I realised that this was a project on its own.

I filed, cut, filed, measured, filed, assembled, filed, soldered, filed and then checked against the plans. The Flair undercarriage is spring damped - which is nice - but the wheels are wider set than indicated on the plans and the plans seem to correlate with the 3 view drawing of the full size I have. So out came the wire bender and I rebent the struts and trimed to get the assmebled structure to comply with the plan geometry. I needed to add some tapered packing blocks to provide the appropriate forward aspect of the main struts but over all happy with the results.

Not sure I would use the kit again though it is considerably more work than the bent up wire frame suggested. I hope the spring damping makes it all worth while.

Extra Fury

Andrew,

It's looking great !! And nice that you doing a build thread. Hopefully I will have the cash next year to purchase my Tiger. I'm thinking a Traplet or Flairkit at this stage. Scale is a priority, but would like to avoid a fully functional rigging wing systems, belts and braces or somehting like that. Keep you pics going. ef

Andrewmc

Good to have someone close to home looking in.

To the best of my knowledge the traplet kit is more scale, but the flair kit has a great reputation too......

Then there is also Clark Industries ex Canada - quite price though once the shipping costs to SA have been added.

Happy that I went with the Traplet, the fibreglass parts are great quality and you get to select your own wood and hardware, I would go that way again. Also the service from Traplet was excellent, orderex UK, to delivery in SA in 7 days.

catchthatpidgeon

Hi Andrew,
How's the build going? We've got most of the frame built now and share your questions about how to mount the Laser 180. We also have decided to use the Flair u/c, but as you say it is a small project in itself.
There seems to be lots of areas in the build where the detail is left up to the builder's discretion, such as how to mount the rigging anchors to the spars. I really don't fancy just whacking them on with self tappers straight through the spars. Also, how is one supposed to mount the tail and fin?
There seems to be so many of these details left un-sorted.
More pics of your build would be great!
Ed

Andrewmc

At last I have completed the undercarriage assembly - a little finessing to do perhaps but generally all is aligned and square. This is not a straight forward task at all. Trying to keep alignment while holding together while soldering was tricky to say the least, a couple of elastic bands helped even though these snap as soon as you add the soldering iron heat[&:]

All in all I think the design on the plans would be much easier to assemble accurately.

Glad this is finished and can get back to glueing balsa together.

catchthepigeon - I know what you mean about the tail assembly. I do not fully understand where or how part 14 goes or what the plans mean by "fill in from here to tail post"
So I decided to make the horizontal stab and see if have that piece on hand clarifies anything.

Andrewmc

I have resolved the tail attachment issues. From the plans extract in the previous post part #14 is glued onto the upper surface o fthe main spar at the indicated location - taking care to ensur ethat they are identical each side. The 1.5mmx6mm in fill is along the top longeron underneath item 14 to balance the GF turtledeck which is glued to the longeron just forward item 14.

Having sorted this out in my mind I am finishing of the horizontal stab by soaking the 3x3mm LE sections against the profile of the stab. I first pinned the stringers and then sprayed with water - the plan is a portion copied for building the stab and is not the original

I will glue this to the stab with titebond when all dried overnight. I did the trailing edge by progressivly gluing 1/16" stringers along the edge and then gluing a second one inside that - but i wasn't ecstatic about the way it all turned out - it is ok but not very elegant. I hope the current method will yield better results.

Andrewmc

Still plodding along...

I have completed the Horizontal stab and added the attachment hardpoints. I have deviated from the plans slightly by adding a 3/32" balsa in fill between the two centre ribs to overlap the fuselage sides by 1/4" to allow glueing of the stab to the fuselage and attaching the covering, as I did not see how this could be achieved with only the open structure.

I have also started to shape the fin. I have attached an extract from the plans around the vertical stab indicating the very pointed section and then also the currrent status of the shaping. This is not difficult to do it is just that it seems a VERY pointed profile!!

Good to get back to the building board again.

Andrewmc

Have completed the rudder and hinged - all ready for final sanding and covering.

I completed a trial assembly of the empanage using clamps and pins - all fits together very nicely. However, the elevator moves up freely but does not move down. The plans do not indicate any profiling of the elevator and I assumed that the freedom to move is created by the large hinge gap but the restriction is actually from the fuselage some some sanding down of the elevator will be required.

Does anyone know what the profile of the full scale tiger moth elevator beam was?

Andrewmc

Attached the Vertical fin to the fuselage.

Started with the fuselage cockpit details.

The kit purchase I had made included some FG cockpit details bur th eplans did not reference any support detail for them other than the backrest of the front cockpit. So, using this as a template I made 3 other items for the front and rear cockpit "dashboards' and the rear cockpit back rest.

Measuring off the plan I set the angle of the backrest to 4 deg past vertical and glued all in place using plenty of clamps.

Quite please how it all turned out.

johnboy151a

My Feedback: (68)

I just found this thread, hope your still building this one! I've been looking at getting a set of these plans for some time now. Can't wait to see how yours turns out.
John

Andrewmc

Hi John

Yes still building - I got bogged down with the upper wing supports and tie wires - seems that 4 pairs of hands would help. I have taken a small break from the project to get one of my other models back in flying condition after an unexpected ground contact, but hope to get back to it soon.

I got the plans, woodpack and FG parts impressed with the quality and enjoying the build generally.

KitBuilder

Any update... i know it's old.. but i'm looking for a 1/4-ish moth kit and wondered how this turned out

Andrewmc

I have had to put the project "on hold" while various other projects around the house were finalised not the least of which is our third child who is expected to any day now. I hope to get the tiggie back on the bench shortly.

There are three 1/4 scale tiger moths that I would consider if getting another one now. The first is the Flair kit. Not fully scale and can be hard to get hold of. The second is the Traplet short kit which I have. I have been very impressed with the quality of the fibre glass parts and the wood packs. The other one I know of is the Falcon Tiger Moth - there is an ongoing build thread on RCScalebuilder. The advantage of this kit is that you can buy as much or as little of the kit as you like as each component can be purchased separately - a big advantage instead of hand bending the wire cabane structs something I really struggled to get right. I did hear that they are currently moving premises and that parts may not be immediately available. See the links below for more details.

[link]http://www.falconmodels.uk.com[/link]

[link]http://www.rcindia.org/gas-glow-nitro-planes/build-log-14-scale-tiger-moth-from-kit/[/link]

I have bought several products from Traplet and have found their customer service to be excellent. They also have a detailed build thread in their RC magazine which I think can also be viewed online.

PM me if you would like more specifics.

Edit - Links updates