Hey Joshua,

sorry to hear about your Calypso but a new Tipo does indeed qualify as new beginnings!

The first thing you might want to do is read Dick Hanson's article from Model Builder magazine (see attached). One of the things discussed is the amount of anhedral to be built into the stab and the corresponding wing dihedral. The original design had a side mounted engine with a side exhaust which slung the pipe under the wing. The presence of the pipe in that position required, according to Dick and Dave Brown too I'd imagine, the considerable anhedral in the stab for neutral knife edge response. With a RE VF in your hands, you are likely going to end up with the pipe down the side of the fuse unless you do something funcky like an inverted install with an S-shaped header to contain the pipe in the fuse top (Magic style). If you do locate the pipe along the side (Dirty Birdy style), you may want to consider Dick's suggestions for the amount of stab anhedral.

I haven't seen many orange T720 fuses but I have seen a few Illusion fuses in that tone. Are you sure it's not an Illusion (no pun intended)? If it has a bellypan, then its not a Tipo 720 but an Illusion 750. Once thing is fairly certain, I don't believe green or blue polyester fuses were ever made of these classics so they are all epoxy of differing types of resin. But I'm always surprised at finding out things that transpired back in the 80's. I recently found out that WK actually produced a glass/foam Tipo 40!

If your cores are original GP and were not cut more recently, check them over thoroughly. I have two sets one of which has been built but both presented problems in being unevenly cut. My first Tipo cores had "fat" deviations near the root and since they were cut as mirror images of each other, when flipped to produce two panels, they ended up with a fairly nasty root match discrepancy. One of the stab cores was worse yet with what looks like a bow (or template) that dropped near the TE while being cut - result, warped TE. I actually, re-cut Tipo cores to match Dick's original plans. the planform of those plans has wings that are slightly different from the GP plans and cores. The wing tip shape in particular was drawn differently on Dick's plans than those provided by the GP kits. This is of course not that important for flight but it does result in a wing which has different aesthetics. I prefer the "swept back" look of Dick's original plans. I actually cut cores for Tipo's in all sized based on scalings I did to result in Tipo's ranging from a 15 size to a 120 size (15, 25, 40, 60, 120). These cores I know are good, straight and symmetric. If you find a problem with yours, let me know.

Speaking of plans, which ones were you planning to order? As far as I know the only complete ones available are Dick's from MB. Those plans are discussed in an extensive scaling project thread. Here's the link:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_7825947/tm.htm

To build a GP/WK glass/foam Tipo, you might find the GP plans to be more useful but I don't have a digital copy of those. Someone on the forum might. Apparently some kits came with plans containing some details but I don't believe the GP kits ever had a full size plan. My kit was one of the first coming out from GP and actually had no plans.

As far as linkages, materials and so forth, it is a bit of a personal preference but these designs, back then, used and/or recommended the use of an arrow shaft (Dave Brown) forked elevator pushrod. Nowadays you can improve on that concept further using CF rods and the rod can even be supported by the tail post and run in a brass or aluminum bushing to keep the rod centered about the elevators. In my build (unfinished) I installed four servos on a single tray in the rear of the wing saddle area. The servos were laid out for a "torsionless" elevator control (side mounted servo), P-P rudder (center mounted), throttle and a separate servo for steering. Retracts are Kraft Multicon electrics (heavy but cool). I have a second build to do in which I'll probably install the radio a little differently and I might use a carbon/balsa/carbon tray rather than a ply tray.

You might also want to check out Mike's (8178) GP Tipo 720 build thread - the only semi-complete thread on the forum as far as I know:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_2827386/tm.htm

I hope this provides a good start.

David.