Posts: 1598
Joined: 9/1/2002 From: West Chester, OH, USA Status: offline
Lights:
pic 1/2: I bought a RAM landing lights at the Toledo show. I plan on putting them in the two P-51's and the P-40. They will be mounted just under the surface in the back of the wheel well and in the center location as indicated. For the P-51s, they are suppose to rotate down but I'm going 'cool' but not quite 'scale'. I'm not sure where they go on the P-40: I'll have to check that out. It's a very simple system: a 9 v battery, a mechanical switch which will be activated by the retract servo and two light bulbs.
----------- Retracts (cont)
pic 3: If you recall awhile back, I was having trouble with the retracts leaking air at the cylinders. Charles at Yellow said to insure the cylinders don't bind on the air lines and servo wires (which they were doing). There is not enough room between the ply retract mounting plate and the air cylinders so I had to take drastic measures! Both servo wires and both air lines were going through the retract area. I decided to route the servo wires completely under the mount (not easy to do when the wing is already epoxied together!). I resolved this by using a 1/2" diameter brass tube and manually twisting the tube from a hole in the top of the wing to the far top edge of the ply mouning plate. I then fished a wire with a hook on it and pulled the two servo wires under the plate to the top of the wing (fun!).
pic 4: Here's where the wires originally come out to the retract area. The tube made a hole directly under where the wires are in the picture and they were fished to the top of the wing.
pic 5: Here's the wires coming out of the new holes. Right below the wires are also the new holes for the air lines.
pic 6: Here, the air lines now go under the mounting plate and into the large hole in the plate. This cleans up the area considerably.
pic 7/8: I also routed both cylinder air lines to the front of the cylinders. top/bottom view.
pic 9: I enlarged the hole in the plate by about a 1/4" (the burned edge from cutting disk). This allows the two air 'T' connections and incoming air lines to be down in the hole in the mounting plate and, hopefully, no binding! I haven't tested it yet but I think this will fix the problem.
pic 10: Now there's room for the air lines and the wires are completely 'out of the picture'. Those two incoming air lines that I'm holding will be completely down in the hole below the mounting plate.
< Message edited by samparfitt -- 4/15/2007 10:24:45 PM >
Posts: 1598
Joined: 9/1/2002 From: West Chester, OH, USA Status: offline
Ailerons (cont)
pic 1: Previously, I shaped the LE of the ailerons into a 'bell curve'. I didn't like this so I cut the LE off, epoxied some new balsa and made the LE a half a circle curve with angled slots for the pin hinges.
pic 2: I used 0.5 oz FG cloth and ZAP finishing resin on the ailerons.
------------ Built in access covers on the molded fuse: There are a lot of raised access covers on Yellow's fuse. I decided to put aluminum duct tape on them so, later, I can sand the paint off of them to show weathering and have the aluminum show through the paint.
pic 3/4/5: Here's one of the raised access covers. I just pressed the aluminum duct tape over the entire hatch and then used an x-acto knife to cut around the edges and pulled off the excess waste.
pic 6/7: Here's the rest of the access covers done. The covers that are round or partly round was cut before applying the aluminum duct tape.
pic 8/9: All the bare parts and aluminum tape got primered with two part auto primer.
Posts: 1598
Joined: 9/1/2002 From: West Chester, OH, USA Status: offline
Painting
pic 1-8: The paint scheme will be green and beige on the top with light gray on the bottom. I just put the green on. Again, water base Behr, 100% acrylic, exterior. Half a quart with two caps of floetrol and about 40% blue window washer fluid. I don't know if these pictures are terrible because of the camera, the paint dust in the air, or the dark green color but the pictures are terrible butit's the best I can do! Everything covered well except the rudder and one elevator. As you can see in the last picture, there are pin holes in the paint. The paint is covering solartex and I'm betting that I'd didn't seal the material properly with the primer. As with any paint, if something 'screws up', leave it alone until it dries and then work on it.
< Message edited by samparfitt -- 4/17/2007 3:21:14 AM >
Posts: 1598
Joined: 9/1/2002 From: West Chester, OH, USA Status: offline
Painting (cont)
pic 1/2: I primered and sanded the ailerons, so I decided to paint them along with the problem rudder and elevator paint problems from yesterday. Before painting the problem rudder and elevator, I wet sanded them. I was expecting the worse but the paint flowed on the rudder and elevator with no problems. I have no idea why those pin holes appeared yesterday. Yesterday, the gun had plenty of green paint when I finished painting them so it seems unlikely that any contaminants were in the paint. Possibly I previously sprayed some oil base solvent on the parts. Anyway, all's better in the universe! Tomorrow, I plan on masking and putting the beige on: I'm figuring two days drying time is good enough for the second coat!
Posts: 1598
Joined: 9/1/2002 From: West Chester, OH, USA Status: offline
Painting (cont)
pic 1: The beige paint goes on next. I need to mask off all the green. I used a mirror to cut the masking tape into 1/8-1/4" wide pieces that will easily bend for all the curves in the paint pattern.
pic 2/3: Initially, I masked the outline of the pattern on the plane.
pic 4: I used a pant leg to reduce the tackiness of the tape to insure the tape doesn't pull off the green paint, since it's only been two days since the green paint was added.
pic 5: I bought three bags of 1/2" insulation foam rope at HD. There's 20' in each bag and I used up two bags. They are less than 4 bucks each bag.
pic 6/7/8: After masking off all the green areas, I used tape to hold the insulation foam rope along all the edges. Hopefully, this will give me a 'fuzzy' line. It took six hours to do all the masking.
Posts: 1598
Joined: 9/1/2002 From: West Chester, OH, USA Status: offline
painting (cont)
pic 1/2/3/4/5/6: Fortunately, putting the paint on doesn't take six hours! (this is the easy part!). After putting a first coat on, I checked all the parts and I had to put another coat on. Unlike solvent base paints, I read that light colors will cover dark colors. It did require two coats but it would have taken alot more using solvent base paints. As with the green, I mixed up half the quart with two caps of Floetrol and about 40% blue wind shield wiper fluid. The beige is Behr, 100% acrylic, exterior grade water base paint.
The beige is called Sahara (310d-5), the green is (CF-PORT-6948-2) and gray is (CF-POR-7173-1).
< Message edited by samparfitt -- 4/18/2007 7:42:59 PM >
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All Forums >> RC Airplanes >> RC Warbirds and Warplanes >> RE: Yellow P-40 build thread 
RE: Yellow P-40 build thread - 
