chistech

Hello,
Has anyone ever built and flown the English make Aerotech Sea Fury? It is a wood covered foam kit with a 52" span. I have one now I'm building and curious if anyone has built and flown one. Not a great kit, lots of mismatched wood thickness and wing cores edges that are too wide for the wood supplied to cover those edges, etc. I can fix these small issues but just curious on anyone else experiences.

http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...d=0CCAQMygDMAM
http://www.google.com/imgres?imgurl=...d=0CCEQMygEMAQ

chistech

This kit has foam covered with Obeeche wood. I wanted to put in retracts so I made up some test framework to set up the angles for the struts. I wanted a good forward rake to the gear but wanted a 3" tire to fit completely in the wing. I am using standard offset struts and not the scale typical Sea Fury special struts. Once I had the depth and angle correct I made up two 3/32" ply ribs for each side.

Both ply ribs were cut with the proper angles for the retract support rails. I used my Dremel router set the the thickness of the ribs and completely routed out the ends of the center section so the ribs will sit flush with the end of the Obeeche sheeting. At the two inch mark from each end, using a razor saw, I cut through the bottom sheeting and all the way to the top sheeting (not through) the thickness of the second rib I made. The rib was inserted all the way to the top sheeting and when glued in will have a small balsa cap strip that I can sand down even with the bottom sheeting. The two ribs once all epoxied in to the foam core should make a real strong fill chord retract support.

When installing the outer wing panel I will use a dowel to the rear and a aluminum tube to the front as outer panel spars. The two rib system in the center section will make a secure mounting to drill into for the two spars. The aluminum tube spar will also double as a channel to run the aileron servo wire from the outer panel in.

SIX GUNS

good luck with the outer gear doors they are a bear to set up or you can leave them off

Chad Veich

My Feedback: (60)

No he can't!

SIX GUNS

Master chad I say that with great respect , have you delt with this style split
door if so how do you set them up ????

Chad Veich

My Feedback: (60)

I was just messing with chistech six guns. If you have been watching any of his recent build threads then you already know that he has been getting a bit "crazy" with the details on these smaller models. Regarding the split doors I'm afraid I have no experience to share but I am pretty confident on a model the size of this little Aerotech Sea Fury my solution would be exactly as you recommend. Leave them off!

chistech

Hi Chad,
Not sure how "crazy" I'm going to get with this one. There's a lot of plastic that doesn't quite fit that good and a lot of other things that aren't quite right. It's going to take a fair amount of "work" to get things "good enough" never scaling it out like the Shinden Kai.

I've got a lot more good kits to build like my Katz Devastator on floats. I have a good idea to put on the corrugations too. Working with a guy right now who makes stencils and to have him make up some thick stencils with the proper spacing and ridge width. My idea is to paint the wing one light coat of color then apply the stencils. Then apply layers of color onto the stencils until it's thick enough. Wet sand the painted area until it's down to the surface of the stencil so the paint releases easily. Lifting the stencil off should leave the raised rib look of the corrugations. Then apply another coat of color over everything. Now if the corrugations get scratched at all they will be in color vs. if they were made by painting with primer. I know primer builds quicker but the Klass coat color will also be harder than the primer. Sounds good in theory anyway. Will have to make some tests once I start building it. A little ways off.

SIX GUNS

chistech , I am interested in how you tackle some of the weird geometry problems that this plane has like the the landing gear and tail wheel retract I am building the bates 80 in sea fury


Jim

chistech

Hi Jim,
I'm not sure if I'm going to use a retract tailwheel or not but I might. I do have a couple TW retract units in the drawer so you never know. I need to look more closely at the airframe and especially the retracts. My main concern on this small (52") bird is just to have the retracts. I know my geometry is going to be different on the gear because I'm not using scale type struts. My wheel wells will not be as close as the full scale either but if there is some things I tackle and they can help you with yours please feel free to ask. I will help in any way I can. One of the things I really enjoy about building is solving the problems that arise when trying to duplicate the details of the prototype in our models.

SIX GUNS

Ya I know what you mean about solving problems I am on the 4 th week of
sorting out the landing gear in the wings the gear doors are quite a
pain having a split door that go in different directions


Jim

chistech

I've been studying the drawings and here is what I see. The small door that appears to swing at a different angle can be hinged close to the retract's pivot point but gets hinged level with the wing surface. This short door can open parallel with the main spar which will cause it to appear quite a bit of a different angle than the door that's attached to the strut. The door attached to the strut follows the needed angles the landing gear is set at so when it's closed the leading edge of the main door appears parallel with the main spar but when the gear come down the geometry at the hinge line causes the two door's extremes to each other.

I know you know this but I'm not sure if it will be that hard to make the two work together. The hardest part is getting the small door to close. A small cam that works off the side of the retracts pivot (trunion) that could push on the back of the hinge line of the small door. Or a control arm on the same pivot that does the same thing on the small door. On a plane of your size you'll have more room to do this. I like to make up a mock set up to do this kind of thing like shown in the pictures above. Do you have a build thread going on yours? If so, I could take a look and try to offer something if I think it would help.

SIX GUNS

Well I don't have a build thread any place but I did figure out that the small
gear door is very sensitive to the placement of the control arm attached to the
strut I did get the doors to work it's just a matter of getting the main door secured
to the strut correctly then I will be done with the right side then I get to do it all over again
on the other side yaa !! . I think I am going to use a 60 size retract nose gear
for the tail retract


Jim

chistech

I make brackets on my miller that go around the strut that I can use a tiny machine to fasten the door to the bracket. Are you using the scale type double arm, offset yoke strut?

SIX GUNS

chistech , what I ended up doing is made a piece of strap steel and wraped it around the strut and attched a ball socket to that and then a short rod to another ball socket to the door

alanc

Be carefull wirh this model, the kits were produced as very much a family thing, check wing/ tail incidences, check the sections of wing actualy match up, Line the tips up with an incidence meter at the tip, if the wing has any twist, get the tips right and sacrifice the root line up, they were NOT good kits, produced quickly on a friday, and sold without testing on a saturday, they were taken from well known plans , your fury was from the george dowdswell plan, so the basics were there, but they were made for a quick sell, not customer satisfaction,

chistech

Thanks Alanc,
It is pretty obvious when one gets into the construction of this kit it's not very well made. The sheeting is well done but a lot of the cores are too big for the edge wood supplied. I will definitely us a incidence meter when truing it up. I find that the foam core models have more "twisted" wing issues than the built up ones. I have a bunch of Jemcos to build also so I'll have the same issues to prevent.

chistech

Well after almost a year I'm getting back to this and also to building RC in general. I've also started on my Skyshark Dauntless and will post that thread soon. I got a little disheartened with my RC club and basically quit the hobby for some time to take a breather. It's a long story but I ended up resigning my events coordinator position because of the lack of member participation and total lack of any sort of club enthusiasm for events. Enough said there.
Picked up a 31' Chevy in Sept. of 2014 and in 13 months, finished a total frame off, rotisserie restoration. Needless to say there was no time for building RC. Now that the Chevy is done, I've realized I have way too many kits and still really enjoy building, whether it's an antique car or a RC plane kit. Now it's time to get back to the kits. Pictures coming soon of the recent work finishing up the retract installation in the foam core center section. Here's some pictures of my Chevy for those of you who enjoy antique cars.