Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

I mentioned earlier that I was concerned about the Proskin sheeting on the fuselage being able to flex a little and crack away form the glued-on LE, perhaps allowing the skin to loosen. I therefore elected to use 3/4oz glass cloth to apply an LE "cap" that extends about 1" over the top and bottom skins, then I simly sanded the glass a little and faired it in with a little green putty. This is the first squirt of primer over that cap, to allow me to see any areas that still need filling or sanding.

This cap may be unnecessary, but I prefer to err on the side of over-engineering things.

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

I also mentioned earlier, that I screwed up a bit when I added the blocks for the anti-rotation dowels, as I didn't match the incidence of the wings perfectly before gluing the blocks in place.

In case it helps anyone else who's as dumb as me with such things, here's a handy way of solving such a problem. I used a permagrit rotary file to adjust the holes in the wooden blocks so that the wing could be rotated to the correct position. I then removed just a tad more material from the block, and located some brass tubing whose inside diameter exactly matches the outside diameter of the anti-rotation dowel, and cut some lengths that. Then the wings were put on, the brass tubes were slipped over the dowels from inside the fuselage, and the wing indicences checked and adjusted again. Once they were just right, I applied Hysol to glue the brass tubes to the blocks, and now I have wings that slip on in the correct orientation without there being any slop.

Unfortunately the photo of this is kinda fuzzy - sorry 'bout that.

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

The main gear door setup is somewhat complicated, having multiple separate moving parts. First there is the section that is attached to the fuselage (shown previously, but which has yet to be extended for its overlap onto the wing), then the parts that are attached to the wing involve 3 separate moving parts - see the pic of the fullsize aircraft attached.

There isn't much on the strut for some of these parts to attach to, so I will need to get inventive. Another minor complicating factor is that in order for me to have access to the retract unit, I need to cut out another (non-scale) section of the wing and make a removable cover. The pic of the wing below shows a piece of Proskin that will later be cut into 3 parts for the 3 moving soor sections; the gap through which you can see the retract shows where the removable cover will be needed.

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

The plans & instructions don't tell you how to do the doors etc - I'm just making this all up as I go along... so if you decide to build one of these kits you may want to do things completrely differently. BTW, if any of you have suggestions that might help me plan & build the doors, feel free to speak up. I won't be at all offended if you think I'm doing it wrong, and I would be more than happy to hear alternate ideas.

Anyway - next step for me was to place the (still joined) 3-door panel on the wing and align it, then trace around the outline onto the wing and cut the wing skin to match. Now, the main gear has a fair amount of slop in it - I've already removed some, and have plans for removing more by redoing the trunion axle and its brass-tube "bearing", but there will always be enough slop that having the gear door fit cleanly into the opening without leaving a fair sized gap. I decided therefore to just hide that gap by making a lip under the cutout on the wing, as shown below. The lips are just sections of pro-skin notched and shaped to slip under the skin and around the wing ribs.

AsiaSRC

Hi,
watch closely every new posting! thanks

Best Regards

albert

AsiaSRC

Any infor regarding missing link to MR's site??

Is he closed for business!

regards

albert

paul Lewis

Hi AsiaSRC

Just looked at the site and its still there http://www.mickreevesmodels.co.uk/. Will call Mick later to see if theres a problem.

I'm building the Hunter as well, all 'building' work finished needs the installation and paint completing. There were some pics on Micks site but can't find them now. Doors have been a pain and still can't quite work out how to do the little inner ones. Pro skin is exellent stuff though, very easy to work with and produces an 'instant' finish.
Who is going to be the first to fly one?

Cheers

Paul

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

You'rs will probably fly before mine, given the reduced amount of building time that I have just now.

Feel free to post any pics you have of yours, including what you have done so far with the doors - that's the area that I'm working on now, and I'd be happy to trade ideas etc.

Gordon

AsiaSRC

Hi, Paul

Thanks, he has a new site address, as old address http://www.mrmodels.fsnet.co.uk/ is off.

Is this the new trend to link R/C with music? can see MR posted a few electric organs pix on his site too?
just to get in tune when futaba MP3 Tx launching!
"IF YOU CANT DANCE THEN YOU CAN FLY"

Best regards

Albert

AsiaSRC

Oohs! it should be!

IF YOU CANT DANCE THEN YOU CANT FLY..

regards

Albert

mickreeves

My site is now at
www.mickreevesmodels.co.uk
Mick

mickreeves

I agree with your decision to wrap the leading edges with light glass cloth.
Mine were just painted balsa [for quickness]. When the model crashed vertically into the ground, one wing hitting a wire fence, the nose was crumpled and broken but the rear half was undamaged.
The wing panel sprung apart at the L.E. and there were a few splits in the skin. It would be possible to repair the wings by pulling the skins back down. I think a glass cover over the L.E. might have saved the wings.
Mick

mickreeves

I find that the kit parts for the drop tanks will go together quite quickly and give a light and strong component. These reprsent the smaller of the two sizes of drop tank which could be fitted. The pylons are correct for the one I built, but dont forget that all Hunters are not identical.
Mick

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

You must have some secret method - in which case, please share ! I tried for hours. Then I called a couple of my model-building buddies over & asked them to have a go & show me what I was doing wrong. They both gave up after a while.

That said, I have gotten totally frustrated with some parts of a BVM Mig 15 that others seem to have little or no problem with, so clearly there is some subjectivity involved as to what is awkward / annoying and what is not.

I did hunt through several Hunter books (I bought about 7 or 8 of them as part of this project), and I didn't see the straight up & down pylons on the pics I studied, but its entirely possible that there are others that I didn't see that had vertical edges.

BTW, welcome to RCU - it's good to see more manufacturers coming online.

If you feel like sharing some ideas on how the gear doors should be mounted, feel free - I haven't gotten to that part yet, and I know that others have also expressed some bewilderment about how best to do this.

For the tires - are you interested / willing to make any tires available that are made from a harder compound ? I've had another manufacturer tell me that he'll make them for me if I spend the money for molds, which might be viable if other builders want soem sets too - but perhaps you'd care to offer harder tires (that' "tyres" for us Brits) yourself ?

I hope to get back to my kit sometime soon. Right now, extra stuff at work, plus buying another house, etc., have taken up all my time so that none has been available for the build. Staring at the gear doors and sratching my head a little (creating a bald spot in the process) is about all I've managed to do recently

Gordon

63 squardron leader

HI ALL
NEW MEMBER BUT AWAITING MY HUNTER KIT CAN'T BELIEVE MY LUCK FINDING SO MUCH INFO HERE.

Dave03B

welcome. good ere innit!

Dave03B

by the way, big hunter fan here. How are they coming along guys?

HenryRG

The reason you can not get to him is that he has changed his ISP recently.

His new address is http://www.mickreevesmodels.co.uk/ and E-mail is [email protected]

Visit his Web site and you will see a few other pics. There was also a review in the recent issue of Jetpower magazine .

JSF-TC

My Feedback: (2)

Dave,

Not to hijack Gordon's thread, but I've updated my Westbury Hunter thread.

[link]http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_2192636/anchors_2192636/mpage_1/key_westbury/anchor/tm.htm#2192636[/link]

Seems that the Hunter appeals to us Brits.

Paul

HenryRG

Mick changed his ISP recently here are his new details:-

E-Mail [email protected] site www.mickreevesmodels.co.uk

63 squardron leader

HI ALL
GOT MY KIT TODAY,GORDON WAS RIGHT IT IS A BIG BOX

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

Well, progress is slow right now, due to a combination of not having much time for building, and being at a stage where I have to do a bit more "figuring out" rather than just building, but I have managed to make a little bit of progress.

I've decided how to mount one of the 4 door components on the main gear, so have been working on that. The gear strut has a single hole (tapped 4-40) in it, about 1/4" above the top of the tire. This would seem to be intended for use in attaching the local part of the door somehow, but since there is only one hole, that means just one machine screw .. so clearly some mechanism is needed in order to prevent the door from rotating around that attachment point. I chose to make a simple "saddle" that would be attached to the door, and fit around the sides of the strut. It has captive 4-40 nuts in it to allow attachment via the aforementioned tapped hole.

Note, however, that since this attaches the door to the strut via a hole through the strut, I can NOT rotate the strut without rotating the gear door - so it is critical to get the wheel alignment set up correct at this point, otherwise if I have to rotate the struts the door will no longer fit

Next thing to notice on this door, is that the thin & flexible pro-skin material is clearly not rigid enough to survive without something behind it to make it more rigid and prevent it just being peeled off by the airflow, so some kind of stiffener is needed. This stiffener also has to have a slight curve to it, in order to ensure that it holds the door in the correct shape - so I put a couple of pieces of plywood at either enf of the door, clamped the middle down, and then glued the stiffeners on to ensure some curvature. This is shown in the pic below:

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

Note, BTW, that the stiffeners in the above pic do not extend all the way to the sides of the door - they stop far enough short to ensure that they clear the "lip" that I added to the cut-outs in the wing.

At this point, when I excercised the gear a few times, I found several problems that need to be taken care of before I can go much further...

Problem #1 is that the gear does not stay all the way up when retracted - in the up position, the gear can drop down as much as 3/16" from its closed position. This is due to slop in the retract unit itself.

When I took the retract out to inspect it, I found that the guide pin was substantially smaller in diameter than the gap that it sits in. My camera is no good at really close-up shots, so I was unable to capture decent photos showing how these retracts work - so I'll have to try to describe it instead. In something like a BVM retract unit, the guide-pin will be guided in its travel by means of a slot that is machined in both sides of the retract unit housing ... as the pin is moved along this slot (by the air cylinder pulling or pushing it), that moves the strut up or down. The MR unit does not have machined slots for the guide-pin - instead it has solid side plates, with a small guide-plate added to the top of the cylinder to act as the upper capture point for the guide pin, and the lower capture is via the trunion block. I found that in the gear-up position there was a substantial gap such that the pin was not being held in the correct position, and could drop 1/16" away from the guide plate, allowing the gear strut to then swing partially downwards again.

To fix this, I made up some new guide plates which eliminate this particular source of slop. Here you can see the 1/8" aluminium bar (coated with engineer's-blue for easy marking. The part sitting on top is the original; the scribed line on the blued-bar shows how much bigger the new piece is than the original. I've done 2 parts so far (enough for one retract), and have yet to do the other (I'm keeping one retract in "original" condition just now just to help determine how much difference my changes are making.

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

While I had the retract apart, I also added some silicon fuel tubing to the bolt that captures the end of the air cylinder - this prevents the cylinder from slopping from side to side (due to the cylinder being about 5/16" narrower than the gap that it's mounted in).

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

The next problem is that the fore-aft position of the gear door can vary from one retract cycle to the next. That turned out to be caused by another source of slop. In this case, I can hold the wing still and move the wheel fore & aft (in either the closed or open position) by about 1/4". The gear swings around a steel pin that is mounted in a brass bush, and it turns out that I can wiggle the pin sideways because the hole in the brass bush is oversized. I haven't fixed this issue yet, but clearly I am going to have to make up some new bushes.