tahustvedt

Thanks. That makes sense for the shape it has. Other planes have toroidal antennas... I think.

tahustvedt

Primed to check the filler smoothness. Looks good enough. Next is to open up all the exhaust ports. This is going to be one well ventilated cowl. I hope the new vents don't look too oversize in the end. the molded bumps were pretty wide and they barely cover them.

tahustvedt

The canopy looks pretty silly on these sets. Why do ARF manufacturers insist on making canopies with giant pillars? Surely it can't be any more difficult to make them the correct thickness. It's just silly. I might cut out the windows and glue lexan to the inside to improve the look.

Not much left on the cowling before it's ready for paint. The rest of the fuselage still needs work though.

tahustvedt

Here's the result of my wing seat surgery.

tahustvedt

These are the colors I will use. I wanted to use olive drab for the green, but they were out, and will be for a while, so I'm using this "DDR green" instead.

tahustvedt

I won't make the tail wheel retractable, but will make internal rudder linkage. Here's the brazed steering shaft.

The elevator linkage will be external to allow the removal of the horizontal stabilizer.

tahustvedt

Almost done with the herringbone stripes on the fuselage.

tahustvedt

Some extra bits and bobs installed. The antenna post, rudder and tail cone is on, as well as the tail gear fairing. The tail cone and tail gear fairing are removeable.

w1nd6urfa

My Feedback: (4)

Removable tail fairing, nice!

My build has been in the backburner for over a year but I looked at my build notes and did wonder how to install the tail wheel properly

tahustvedt

The vertical stabilizer could use some extra support as well, so it's probably a good idea to remove the tail fairing and install a piece of plywood in there.

tahustvedt

Here's a shot of the motor mount and battery access. I haven't made a battery tray yet. I'll do that when I balance it.

tahustvedt

Flags are done. This took many hours.

tahustvedt

There. I've finished painting the fuselage and tail. It just needs a couple of little water slide decals that I will print myself, and some weathering. The wing will be painted after I have turned spring struts and adapted the doors fully.

aviation421

My Feedback: (68)

Beautiful, just beautiful....is there any chance I could buy one of those spinners from you? it is very scale...
Keep up the good work...

tahustvedt

Thanks. I worry that the spinner will break up on a high rpm system. I will use mine at around 4000 rpm-5000 rpm. I can put the spinner up for download on Thingiverse and you can print it yourself.

tahustvedt

Here's the spinner I made: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1775192

w1nd6urfa

My Feedback: (4)

Roger
I've done that on my ESM Bearcat which developed vertical stab and rudder flutter at high speed dives

Your paint scheme is really unique, congrats!

tahustvedt

I'm happy with how it turned out. The green should have been darker, but no one will even know what kind of plane it is at the field so it could have had a fantasy scheme and no one would know.

tahustvedt

Anyone here have good photos of the fuel filler port (or whatever it is) behind the left wing trailing edge? I saw a photo yesterday, but for some reason I didn't save it.

tahustvedt

Some outdoor shots with the prop and weathering. I seem to have forgotten to paint the red cross on the first aid hatch. One side shot is straight on from a distance to verify the scale outline.

tahustvedt

Here's the side shot with an overlaid drawing. As I have said before the outline isn't perfect. This became obvious when I designed the spinner, which had to be bigger than scale for this size Macchi. It still looks like a convincing scale model though, especially compared to other ARF's of the Macchis, which look like they were kidding when they designed them. I'm still a little disappointed at the inaccuracies since it was supposedly designed by italians (Piccole Ali).

tahustvedt

I'm almost finished painting the wing. All that's missing is the black insignia on both sides of the wing, and some basic weathering. I trimmed the base of the radiator scoop to better fit the wing and fuselage curvature. Maybe I'll make a better looking scoop with a functional flap at a later time. The stock scoop has a weird ledge which I assume is supposed to look like the opened rear flap.

tahustvedt

The other side.

tahustvedt

All four insignias are done. That's the end of the paint job. I can finally upgrade the status of the kit to ARF.

tahustvedt

That feeling when a new plane is standing on its wheels the first time. I'm happy with how it turned out. A nice stand off scale model.

BTW. Looks like I will have enough ground clearance for the 21" prop. When the fuselage is level there's about 4 cm (1,5") of clearance between the prop and ground.