ronbell

Greg, Thanks for the update, it sounds like you are making great progress and will indeed be flying in the spring. I know that you will get the best guidance from Normand regarding the gyro but thought I'd send you the following few tid bits in case they help...

First, I have attached a couple of pictures of the accessory mounts that I have installed. The large air tank install is obvious. The wood plates on each side of the fuselage are for the bomb release controller (starboard side) and the matchboxes and channel expanders (port side). Those items will be installed to the plates using velcro. The plywood plate epoxied to the top of the fuse (pictures are taken from the bottom, looking up) is the mount for the gyro. It has scrap pieces packing underneath with the whole lot epoxied to the stringers and bulhead former to create a solid, horizontal platform. The gyro is mounted to this platform using the double sided gyro mounting tape that I use on my helicopter gyros. However, 2 or 3 layer of the good quality 3M double sided tape from Home Depot (the stuff with the red backing) would work fine. The tape is needed to isolate the gyro from the majority of the vibration transmitted through the structure - you do not want to hard mount the gyro.

I believe you said that you are using a Futaba 401. I also use that gyro on one of my helis - please take note that for the gyro to initialize properly it MUST be powered up in Heading Hold mode (gain more than 51%) but you should NOT try to fly in HH mode or disaster is likely. Therefore, part of your start up sequence needs to be allowing the gyro to initialize in HH (steady red light) then switching over to Rate mode (gain less than 49%) before doing anything else. Also, you should have a mechanism set such that you can't accidentally select HH in flight. I don't mean to scare you but this is very important. I had a friend lose a new aircraft on first take off due to a control surface 'hard over' from his gyro being in HH mode (he had his gain values reversed). The easy way to tell which mode you are in is to apply a rudder input then release the stick - If the rudder stays deflected you are in HH mode, if it centers like you would expect you are in rate mode.

Also attached are some pictures of my completed bomb bay (finally!!). Now I get to open the manual and actually start building the plane!

Ron.