RE: Seagull Model Cessna 337 ARF
Got a lot done today! Three of us working on parts and pieces, so we took the best ideas and moved forward.
We removed almost all the covering except where it will remain white. The build job looks good, but the final prep could have used more attention. Example, the wing tips are built up and VERY thin. After covering was removed, there were visible cracks in them. You would not want to let the wing panel rest on the tip so be careful.
Decided to run more lighting. The existing LED's in the wings are white, so these will be used for the strobes and we ran colored LED's for nav lights. Also, we cut channels in the tail booms and wired them both up for the strobes on the bottom of the fins plus the nav light on the top of the right fin. We then filled the grooves we cut back up with balsa which made for a clean job.
We opened up the air scoop up top. Will do a lot more with ducting and flowing air to the rear engine before it's over.
We found that none of the locating dowl pins in the wing center section were glued in. This was good for us since we wanted them to stick out a little more and were replacing them anyway, but you may want to check and make sure yours are glued in if you plan to leave them as is. One of ours pushed inside the wing on a trial mock up.
Also, the front tank is quite low as well. We will probably make a tray to raise it up and hollow out the bottom of the hatch up front to get it closer to the center-line as well as the rear.
My buddy, Larry, found an instrument panel from a 182 and modified it to fit. He also had a Robart nose gear strut we will be using that should work great for this model and will add to the realism. I think he want's to opt-out on the wheel pant idea and 'pretend' he has retracts. If anyone does put retracts in with success, let us know. I'd like to see how it turns out.