Craig B.

Hi Van,

I did mine twice[] ....not happy after the first time round, I eventually was satisfied. Worth the effort. It is very easy to get the old tube out.

Here are some pics of my intake doors..

Craig B.

woops...wrong photo!

Ro

Looking good Craig, love to see more on the stab if ya have pics.

I was hoping there would be more builders kind enough to share info and progress here?

I just finished the getting the right upper intake ramps in last night and started on the lower intake ramp.
I was thinking about using a blind nut on ply for the intake so I could bolt it down from the inside and not
have the hex head bolt visable. basicly just swaping the way you mount the hardware for scale looks. Will
post more pics of all this very soon.

Thanks

Craig B.

Hi Van,

I only have pics of the corrected stab (left one was ok but I corrected the right one. I haven't touched the kit for coming up to two years[&o] but will get back onto it soon. (funny thing that, my youngest daughter is also almost two....)


Yours is looking really good. I notice that you did the scale door hinging on the main doors. Did you get wheels and brakes off Peter?

Did you reinforce the gear mounting plates?

Looking forward to sharing more pics.

Craig.

Ro

Hey there Craig,

Thanks for the pics, stabs looks perfect.

For now I decided to just stick with the wheels and breaks provided. I think the ones Peter is using are a tad bit smaller. I may see if he can do a set that are the same size as the ones I have? The kits now have the gear plates reinforced with carbon fiber as well as all the doors and areas around them. I Ordered Intairco's carbon fiber doors so that I could relax when cutting the doors out of the fuse and just cut the new ones to fit after getting the landing gear geometry set and positioned correctly as this will cause you to do minor trimming based on how your gear is intalled and setup. Adjusting the length of the main gear ram and using a shim is the sectret to getting scale angle from front and side views.

Looks like there is alot more carbon fiber reinforcing in the kits going out now but easy to do yourself on the older kits.
I will post a pic that shows the carbon reinforcing very soon.

Cheers

mr_matt

My Feedback: (10)

Hi Craig,

Thanks for the pics, everything is looking great. Question: Have you cut the nose doors out yet? Also, how did you cut out the old stab bearing tubes and what is the design of your new bearing tube?

Thanks,

Craig B.

Hi Matt,

Thanks mate. No, I have not cut out the nose doors yet....she has been on ice since the birth of my last daughter[]. to remove the pivot tubes was very easy infact. Just get yourself a small screw driver with say a 3mm wide blade. Sharpen the end to a blade and working from the outside, chisel out the tube. It will fracture into longitudinal slithers and break out really easily. I should know ....I did it twice. It is alarming how easily it fractures. This prompted me to consider putting a wrap of carbon fiber roving circumferentially around the inboard end of the tube. I am definitely going to do this once I machine some fittings for the inboard end of the pivot rods as suggested by Peter Agnew at Intairco....I will try to find some pics of them.

I just got some new tubes from comp arf and installed them. I am not overly impressed with the fit of the old or new tubes and will probably machine up some ali pivot tubes to fit neatly.
i got some high strength aluminium from Peter for the job.

Can you post some pics of yours? Did you reinforce the landing gear plates?

Hi Van,

Yeah I got some of Peter's doors also and his wheels and brakes.....they are a little smaller to fit through the door opening, a good thing in my opinion. Yours is looking very good.

Regards,

Craig.

Ro

Thanks Craig,

Could you post some pics of those wheels. Would be nice to see them side by side with the ones that come from compArf to see the size difference on width and hight.
Intairco is getting me a replacement tube from compArf. I will be taking one of mine out this weekend. Looking from aft forward its the right rod that needs adjusting.

Cheers,
Ro

Ro

I now have the upper intake ramps in (pics coming). was a little easyier after doing the right side!! This should give me the weekend to focus on the lower ramps.

Does anyone have ideas on a locking mechanisms for canopies? This is not jet specific so any ideas would be nice to see.
I thought about small air rams as locking pins but thats to complicated. Spring loaded latches are another idea. Was going
to have it setup as a working canopy but I will keep it simple.

Ro

Been a little busy with work and other things but managed to get time in on a few things. The upper intake doors are in and so are the lower intakes. Just have to rig the rams on them. Been playing around with wheels/breaks/door clearance issues. These issues are not hard to sort out but still a pain. Based on the angle that I have my struts set to, when the gear is retracted the tires put alot of pressure on the upper airframe surface and do not allow my doors to fully close. The reason is that the brakes sit on top of the wheel hubs and not inside it. The closer you can get the wheel to the strut the more room you gain when retracting. Im going to try some allow wheels/brake that sit inside the wheels from Robart.

Decided to go with Glennis wheels on the nose due to the fact the tires/wheels have a very scale profile and this gives more clearance when retracting the nose gear. Glennis nose wheels are not as wide as the ones that come in the kits so this is a good thing in the clearnce area. I will be taking a bunch of pictures this weekend that I hope helps others.

hemi

Van
I'm working on the inlets and have enlarged the nacelle opening on the top to allow the inlets to slide into place, my question is this when you epozy the inlets in place how far forward should they be? One picture in the manual shows some excess sticking out front that gets squared off later. But one of the pictures in this post lloks like the inlet is slightly back from the leading edge of the nacelle. My inlets have a rather nasty seam that I'll have to deal with to get a good fit. Thanks for the email on the Mig, you got me started again on this great project.

Best regards

hemi

Van
Here is a picture of my inlet I forgfot to attach it. Note the poor seam tape work. I can't tell if there is a right or left inlet, they look like the same parts to me. Is there a difference?

Best regards

hemi

Matt

I cut the nose gear door out on mine using mostly a zona saw and an xacto blade that fits in the #11 handle. Slow go. What upset me was after I cut the door open on the scale outline I discovered that that shrink link on the nose gear does not compress the gear enough to allow it retract into the fuse. I've never seen this mentioned in any thread. The only way I could get the nose gear to go into the well was make the gear door opening longer. I'll blend the small section into the rest of the door later.

best regards

Ro

Hi Hemi,

very happy to see another builder join in.

I used the lower leading edge of the intake as my guide. I just lined up the lower leading edges of the liner and intake and glued the liner to the intake.
I will be sure to post images of this for you this weekend. I just shaved that seem right down in the area that is closest to the leading edge, this way it sits flush.

So in the image you have, you would want to grind that lip down and line everything up as best you can. I hope this helps and will post some detailed pics asap.



-Ro

Ro

getting Late here but wanted to post some progress before I pass out for the night. There are more images but will post those tomorrow.






More soon,
Ro

mr_matt

My Feedback: (10)

Hi Ro,

Thanks for the pictures. Can you tell me how you welded that fitting on the main strut? Gas weld? Wire? I don't know anything about welding, BTW.

Also, how do you plan on retaining the axle "hub" on the bottom of the strut?

Thanks,

Ro

Hi Matt,

I took the struts to a tig aluminum welder and had him just do a simple spot weld. His job was pretty nasty so I grinded away the excess and put jb-weld over the seems and will sand it away so that it looks nice and
clean. Still have alot of cleanup to do on that nose leg also!

I have a new set of alloy wheels/breaks from www.Intairco.net that will fix my clearance problems. The axel hub will be retained with a set screw and locktight after the tow-in angle has been set. Its the same stuff
used to secure the caps on your rams. I had a leaking ram and all I had to do to fix it is heat up the locktight glue on the cap threads and off it came.

Ro

Here you can see the former install and how I cut it to better remove tank in the future.


this is how the new nose gear ram looks installed




Another image of the upper intake door linkages


just an all gear down look


intakes

hemi

Ro
Here are some pictures from todays work. Lesson learned on gear doors. The reason the manual shows the door cut lines being extended a 1/4' further is because the vacumn formed doors are bigger than they need to be. I didn't like the idea of cutting the mig doors bigger than scale so I cut the doors on the panel lines thinking I can make that work. Now I have to either cut the fuse and blend the piece into the door or modify the inner door panel. Its not that I didn't read the note I just ignored it on purpose. OH well.

Second thing my Mig has a couple of spots where the silver finish has seperated from the fiberglass. Its not real bad but has anyone else seen this? If so any good idea's on fixing these areas. I thought about injecting some epoxy into the effected areas. The loose area on the right side of the door and I have a black circle around the area.

Best regards

Ro

Hey John,

I ended up getting carbon fiber doors from intairco.net
I cut the doors out based on the scale lines and then focused on getting the gear struts to clear everything clean. I trimmed where needed
then cut the Intairco doors to fit the new cavity. I trimmed alot off all of the edge lip on the door liners and just created a nice seal along the edge
with hysol/aeropoxy.

Your idea on the using epoxy to fix the surface may be fine. I have not seen anything like that on mine yet.

Your cutting looks super sharp bro!

Ro

lavi rider

My Feedback: (6)

Hi..

Make sure that the main struts are almost parallel to each other when viewing from the front ..I had to "play" with them allot to get them "right" and still get the wheels retract nicely into the fuse.

Ro

Thanks for the tip. using shims are a must in this area

Do you have any install pics of your electronics and hydraulics? I'm pretty close to getting these things installed now.


Thanks

Ro

Oh, I will try and post some images of where I'm at with the build tomorrow night.



Happy New Year everyone!!!

I wish you the very best in 2009

Ro

hemi

The holidays were great for my family and I. hope everyone had a fantastic New Year. I'm back to work on the Mig and I'm working my way through the gear door assemblies. Has anyone set up the doors so they could be installed after painting and removed if any repair work needed to be done later? The doors take a long time to install and control the fit.

Best regards

Ro

I built up my doors exactly like the manual states and it worked out ok. I cut out the doors then started on getting the struts/wheels to sit correctly and swing smoothly into the wheel wells. At that point I trimmed what was needed and then ordered carbon fiber replacement doors from Intairco then just cut those to fit the trimming I had done. Having fresh doors from Intairco made it a more relaxed job!

Nice to see you back into it