greg_m

So after completing the stabs joiner tube installation I prepared the sheeting. I applied the trailing edge fibreglass strips for strengthening and expoxied the sheets to the cores. These were then placed in the clamping device.

Then I fitted and shaped the leading edges followed by the laminated tips. I again deviated from the plans by fitting a full chord length ply insert to strengthen the tip. All came out very nice.[8D]

greg_m

During the clamping time of the stabs I prepared the carbon fibre servo tray. With the guidance of Nazeem again I made my own laminate using the 3mm balsa and carbon fibre cloth/epoxy resin sandwhich. It came out really great and I am well pleased with my newly learnt experiment!!!

Of course the servo tray was completed over a few days!!

greg_m

Well pleased with my servo tray efforts I then went on and made the engine firewall using 5mm ply and carbon sandwhich method. This was then shaped to fit with a small clearance inside the fuse.

The engine mounting is then fitted and the engine is temporarily mounted. Using the backplate of the spinner ( I borrowed the spinner backplate from Nazeem) and a 1mm balsa spacer the whole assembly is suspended in the fuse. The fuse is supported standing vertically.

The backplate is aligned with the nose of the aircraft, the firewall is a snug clearance fit in the fuse, the mounting is located on the firewall to have built in down and side thrust as required according to plans.

The fire wall is then "tacked" in place using 30 min epoxy. Once dried the engine and mounting is removed and the whole circumference of the firewall/fuse joint is filled with a mix of 30 min epoxy and cotton flock. This is done on the front and rear of the fire wall. It dries amazingly strong and looks very neat.

greg_m

The foto of the engine in the previous post includes the laminated ply/carbon nose ring and cheak plates for my installation. Once I finally receive the spinner for my plane, been on order four weeks now [:@], I will double check the engine alignment with the backplate and then install the cheakplates into the fuse to support the nose ring.

greg_m

I made some more progress with the horizontal stabs. These are removable for transport purposes so they require a joining tube and fixing - incidence - points for installing on the fuse.

I hollowed out some of the foam core to install hard points for the incidence pins locating holes. I then expoxied in some blocks using the mix of expoxy and cotton flock. Fills any gaps and is very strong!

Next was to hollow out a small portion of foan core around the joiner tubes. This is then filled with a mix of the expoxy and cotton flock to provide a really strong base. I then fitted a cap strip of 1.8mm ply to finish off the root section of the stabs.

greg_m

Another couple of hours went flashing by while I was busy installing the aileron servos!!!

I first took great care in the planning of the installation so as to make sure I did a right and a left wing servo bay in the underside of the wings. All measured correctly and checked and so along I went with the blades and dremel router and straight edge.

After completing the servo bay holes I made the awfull discovery that I had measured incorrectly on the one side. I was so mad with myself I felt like stomping all over the wings and starting over!!![:@]

I decided to take my daughter shopping instead for christmas presents!!!!

Anyway after the shopping I was in a better mood and formulated a recovery plan as well. Garments can have "invisible mending" - so why not wings - hahaha.

I filled in the hollowed out foam, replaced a piece of the wing sheeting and remarked and recut and rehollowed out the correct servo bay position!!!!

Then I took the wife to supper and celebrated with a few beers[8D]

greg_m

After the efforts with the aileron servos I took a couple of days off building and went flying, shopping and boating. A freind of mine has got into formula 1 R/C boat racing. We spent a day at the pond racing around the bouys. He bout his boys a Thundercat 30-something (not sure what) but after tuning and running in a bit it beat the pants/skirts (??) off of his 3.5cc Formula 1 racing boat!!

Our day ended a bit abruptly when his boat developed a slight forawrd motion problem - the propshaft broke!! The Thundercat blew the silicone joiner pipe for the exhaust so that was also O/C. A good day and a great introduction to another field of R/C for me. I don't think that boating will take over from my pattern flying - it's way too boringly 2D. [8D]

greg_m

Somewhere along the way I done the rudder! My england is good, no?

Great big chunk of foam covered with balsa sheeting and cap strips of laminated balsa/ply/balsa top and bottom. I did not take many pictures during the rudder assembly??

Couple of points about the rudder I put together - it is sheeted with 2mm balsa instead of the 1.5mm the plans call for. It has the trailing edge fibre glass strips as per wing and stab construction. It has the ply laminated capstrips as mentioned.

I've seen some wierd modifications done to some planes rudders while checking out the competition at the pattern comps I've been too. The guys have talked about a thicker trailing edge so I have cut back the trailing edge as much as possible without getting too close to the foam cores. The trailing edges is now 5mm thick on the rudder. This apparently improves something about it's performance - wait and see!!

greg_m

Ok - so now I need to join the two wings together. I need the wing to set up the horizontal stabs joiner tube sleeve that is fitted into the fuse. The wing is required to line up every thing fair ans square!

The wing foam cores are supplied with the dihedral cut into the foam block. This makes it a simple operation to join the wings with the designers correct dihedral built into the wings. With a handy flat level surface available I joined the two foam shucks with packaging tape making sure all is well aligned and square.

I then test fitted the wing panels for accuracy. All seemed well so I proceded to bond the two wing halves using 30 min epoxy along the joint. Then the cores are held together with masking tape and placed in the bottom shucks. After double checking alignment the upper shucks were positioned and some handy weights used to hold all secure. Paving stones left over from the paving recently done at my home!!

The second picture shows where I still need to cut openings for the aileron servo leads. "Tunnels" were made in the foam cores with Nazeems help. A jig was used to pass a heated pipe accurately into the foam cores to the correct depth. You can see the holes in the servo bays in a previous posting.

greg_m

After the wing joint epoxy had completely cured - about two days later - I was busy with my holiday flying routine ok - been having to practice the new advanced schedule for the coming season!!! A big step up from the sportmans schedule that I was used to flying for the past two years.

Anyway after the wing joint had cured I had to shape the wing to fit into the fuse saddle. A little off the front and back please...leading edge and trailing edge surgery was required. I finally had something I was happy with and could proceed with aligning the stab joiner tube.

greg_m

So once the wing was sorted - fitting well into the fuse saddle I could then align and glue in the sleeve for the stabs. I used a mix of 30 min epoxy and cotton flock to fill the gaps and provides a super strong glue joint. It is very handy having an extra empty room with a nice flat surface to work on instead of my single garage!!!

As you can see the inspector approves the final assembly - job well done!!!

greg_m

I have been trawling around for ideas on a colour scheme. After looking at lots of planes and different colours I decided on K.I.S.S.

I have opted for a blue/yellow/white combination for the wings and stabs. The same for the fuse but with some black trimmings to bring out the horizontal lines. Here is a completed stab half that I tested my scheme on - I think it looks great and is relatively easy to put on.

The first pic is the top surface and the second the bottom surface.

greg_m

Ok - so I like the colour scheme so I went ahead and finished off the other stab and then the rudder as well. You can aslo see I have been putting the control linkages to the various moving surfaces. It is amazing how time consuming applying the covering actually is! [:'(]

greg_m

And the rudder!

greg_m

I then completed the stabs incidence locating pins installation. These are carbon fibre pins insterd into the fuse at the correct location and corresponding holes in the individual stabs.

I borrowed another good freind of mines' incidence metre as he has a new one with a lazer pointer on it! I was very pleased with my results and hope it leads to good straight flying - when I am not holding the sticks that is!!!

The pics of the laser pointer is for left and right stab - zero incidence to thrust line.

greg_m

Trying to update this thread between jobs!!!! Anyway somewhere along the way I took time to install the servo tray into the fuse. This needed trimming to fit in the required location - custom fitting job

It holds all the important stuffs so I made sure it is well placed and secured with the 30 min epoxy and cotton flock mix fillets/joints top and bottom!

greg_m

The wing is fastened to the fuse by means of four nylon bolts. The mounting hard points need to be fitted into the fuse wing saddle and the corresponding hardpoints need to be fitted into the wing before fibreglassing the centre joint.

I used 5mm ply with meranti filling in the fuse. I used 4mm pieces of meranti endgrain for the wing hard points. The wing had to be hollowed out to fit the blocks into. All was glued in place using the now familiar 30 min epoxy and cotton flock mix. The end grain pieces were soaked with CA to make them solidly strong.

I also laminated a piece of carbon fibre cloth beteewn the ply plate and the fuse to spread the load over a larger surface for the rear wing bolts fixing points and I used regular glass cloth pieces for the same purpose on the front wing bolts fixing points. Unfortunately cant get camera in for a looksee.

Got the idea from my engeneering experiences with welding doubler plates on hard points for fixtures on the metal bulkheads and decks of ships!!!

greg_m

The wings showing installation of wing bolt hard points. The glasscloth reinforcing can now be applied to the centre section of the wing. A job still to be done.

greg_m

And this is what she looks like all put together. These pics were taken prior to the covering being applied to the tail feathers. As you notice I have not even looked at installing the undercarriage yet. I have opted for fixed gear which is mounted to the fuse just in front of the wing saddle. Anther job still to do....

greg_m

Doing some prep work on the fuse prior to painting. Here I put strips of masking tape either side of the joint along the top surface. I then made up a thinned down batch of auto primer and painted on a few coats by hand to fill in the joint. The original joint is a very good fit - I am just a wannabe perfectionist

Once fully dried I will pull off the masking tape and water paper the rigde flush with the surface.

greg_m

A warbird scale flyer and very good freind of mine was given an engraving machine tool for christmas. He has nothing nice to say about pattern flying although he tries rolls and loops with his warbirds!!!

I decided to test it out on his lounge coffee table....

What you think....

greg_m

I got round to starting the radio gear installation. Started with the engine throttle control. I like the flexible braided cable in sleeve variety for this purpose so I soldered up a pushrod and fitted it last night.

greg_m

I had to make a rather large cutback into the firewall/fuse join area for clearance for the OS header pipe. There is roughly about 3mm clearance now. I then applied a larger fillet of exopy/cotton flock mix on the inside surface (back of the fire wall) to make good the joint that was "excavated" for this[&o]

greg_m

I got stuck into the elevator linkage installation last night.

I very much like the "gold-n-rods" (hope they don't mind the free advertising!) pushrods method so I opted for this method for the elevators. I had an amusing time trying to get the pushrod support brace halfway down the fuselage. It's amazing where a guy tries to stick his head into every now and then - huh!!

Anyway I got it secured in more or less the right place without too much bother. I made slots for the pushrods to pass through the fuse trying to keep the run as straight as possible. I glued the exits with my now preffered 30 min epoxy and cotton flock mix and then shaped the exit wounds!

I have fitted carbon rods inside the sleeves connecting to the linkages and am using a hitec hs5945mg to provide the persuasion[8D]

greg_m

sometimes i really battle to get the images - which are really small uploaded!!![:@]