dabevan

Sorted out the hinges on the nose leg doors. The rear door needs to rotate quite a long way past the 90deg mark so it was quite a challenge to get a suitable hinge. Having tried several types of door hinges the best result I achieved was by using a basic flat pin hinge.

Just need to wait for the air rams to arrive then I'll see if I can get them to open and close correctly.

dabevan

Turning my attention to the ECU and other engine related stuff, I decided I wanted to make it as easy as possible to transfer the turbine to other airframes and so have mounted everything engine related on one ply plate.

Changing engine should be a case of unbolting the turbine, unscrewing the ply plate and disconnecting fuel and turbine power - everything else should be self contained.

dabevan

Before the ECU goes in there is quite a bit of space around the tank for airflow to the turbine, but once the ECU and bits and bobs are in place it restricts a lot of this airflow.

...I decided to open up the holes at the sides of the former in the front of the engine bay. I don't think its compromised the structure, but has given a decent amount of area for the air to get to the turbine.

dabevan

Decided to use static wing tubes in the fuz to make it easier to mount the wings. None are provided in the kit and Mick suggests making some by wrapping card round the ally wing tubes.

...I tried looking online for some tubes with an inside diameter of 1", but couldnt find any so had a go at making some. I put grease proof paper around the wing tubes and then wrapped them in glass, left them over night and the end result seems to work fine.

dabevan

Well, that's all I've done for now. I would post more frequent updates if I could use the forum directly from my phone (ie Tapify!) , but It's a bit of a faff to get the laptop out, transfer the photos etc etc.

...next job is probably to get the tank all plumbed in and the radio wired up. Then I'll mount the turbine and possibly take it over the field to fire it up!

Then its just a case of getting the wing mounting all lined up and close off the remaining open bit on the bottom of the wing and that's most of the 'building' phase complete - the remaining work (which is still a lot!) is sanding/glassing/painting + detail work on cockpit, gun blisters, airbrake etc etc.

I weighed everything and my best guess at the moment is for a dry weight of 25lbs - bit more than some people have built, but not so heavy to be a concern.

mun_iz

Hi Dave,

I am a Hunter fan and hope to build one in the near future... understand that it takes a lot of effort to get it all in the forum for the benefit of others... Many thanks for sharing your build of the Hunter... keep it going... =)

dabevan

I've been working on the main gear doors, these arnt big and are in the fuz. Mick suggests using servos, but I've gone for small air cylinders. The rear bulk head is conveniently positioned to attach the top of the cylinder to and a since the door moves through 90 deg its quite easy to estimate where abouts it needs to connect to the door (ie approx the same distance from the hinge as the cylinder travels - 20mm in this case. (plus a couple of mm to allow for the fact that the swing of the cylinder is reducing its effective length a bit)

...I done lots of thinking and then just decided to guess - and it seems like a good guess since when the cylinder is closed so is the door and when fully open the door is at 90 deg! Hurrey!

dabevan

Er, last photo has come out upside down for some reason!

dabevan

Next set of doors are the nose doors. The front door has to open first, then once fully open the nose leg comes down and pushes the rear door down and beyond the 90 deg line so that it leans backwards slightly and gives a bit more ground clearance.

The difficulty with the front door is that the tyre of the retracting wheel virtually touches it on the way in and out so its not possible to put any kind of linkage in the middle of the door - instead I've had to offset it. Again, since this is a 90 deg door its easy to estimate where the cylinder should attach and again it seems about right. My only concern is that since the cylinder attachment is off centre it might twist the door as it moves. If this happens then I might just have to put a cylinder on the other side to to balance it out. I won't know until I attach the air to it.

The rear door is a bit harder to estimate, it is attached to the gear leg, but has to move further than the gear leg moves - to do this we have to make the distance between the door hinge point and the connection on the door less than the distance between the gear leg hinge and the attachment on the gear leg.

...A few calculations and estimations later I tacked everything in place and closed the gear - unfortunately the linkage fouls the steering spring on the back of the leg as the gear retracts.

A few more attempts and I finally got the position right - then a little adjustment of the clevis and the door was closing perfectly.

dabevan

Whoops! Photos didn't upload!

dabevan

That's all I've done in the past couple of weeks! Next is sorting out the wiring and pneumatics.


This is my little airplane helper - she got this for her birthday and built it in about 15mins (with a little bit of help).

...she can't understand why Daddy takes sooooooo long to build his plane!

dabevan

Hi Guys,

Sorry, but I've decided to discontinue this thread.


I'm still building the Hunter but all future updates will be on a new thread in RCMF.co.uk.

The main reason for this is that RCU doesn't have any decent mobile phone support, where as RCMF has Tapatalk and so can be uaed natively on my iPhone in my workshop. I can take a picture, upload it to the forum and write about it there and then, where as with RCU I have to wait until im at a computer, copy across the photos, upload them and then try and remember what I was going to say!

There have been many people asking when RCU is going to be Tappified, but I for one have run out of patience! ;-)

Happy Flying!

David Bevan

Xairflyer

My Feedback: (1)

Yes had same problem, cant post at all with my iphone4

BaldEagel

Anyone have any news on the Ripmax composite version of the Mick Reeves Hunter that was supposed to be coming out this year?

Mike