While you folks are building the Simla wings, I have on the board a King Altair wing. As I mentioned earlier, when I built this prototype of our King Altair kit in an earlier project with Jeff, I wanted to get the project in the air as soon as possible as we were well into fall at the time. At the time, I used the original foam wing from my RTF King I bought from a modeler getting out of the hobby, (it was my first King Altair). The wing however feels like a "brick" to me at 2lbs 2oz, and it's time to try to shave some extra ounces if possible. In an effort to improve performance, I'm building this wing with an eye toward lightness. My hope is to shave 8 to 12 ounces off the 8lb 5oz King. The performance right now is OK...but I'm going to try to improve that some.

I received my contest balsa from National today, (eight sheets of the bargain, and twelve of the "aero-light"). I haven't opened the box yet, but will tomorrow. In preparation for sheeting the wing, I shaped the L.E./false L.E. to shape so I can sheet right over it rather than up to it. To me that makes a stronger L.E.

I want to tell you about and recommend a tool from Great Planes, (if you don't already have one), that makes this job amazingly easy. Like the fuselage, you have to remove some balsa to get the L.E. to shape, and the "Power Plane" really helps, and makes it easy to get a nice, straight, smooth line. All that is required is some light final sanding with a sanding block with 80-grit paper. I did this work tonight...please forgive the slightly out of focus pictures...depth of field can be tricky sometimes.

Note the centerline drawn on the L.E....the object is to sand up to the line, but NOT to sand the line off until the finish sanding when it is very lightly rounded. This is a thick wing, (much like the Simla), but unlike the Simla, I'm going to deliberately try to get a sharper L.E. in the hopes of it cutting the wind a bit better. Right now, the King has a decided "whistle" to it as it flies by due to the "draggy" wing.

We still have to talk about the wing tips.

Duane