B.Day

I originated this thread and I thought I would share how this plane has evolved. The original pictures show it after I had scratch built a nose for it and added wheel pants. But after flying it for a while as usual the shelf paper covering became a problem keeping it on. Originally I knew this would have to be replaced so the time came to replace it.. Getting the old covering off is a real problem. Everyone to his own methods but I found that the worst thing you can do is to try to pull iit off. This makes it seperate and leaves the coloring stuck on the wood. Bad mistake. What you want to do is to use a large heating iron and pull it off gently as it heats up . This works pretty good but there will always be some that will not come off. I then used acetone and steel wool to remove the rest.
With that done I moved into the modifications I wanted to do. First I made a battery hatch in the rear, I used an existing opening and just made a hatch as this was to use it's own weight to balance it, I needed weight in the rear. Then I used 1/2 " tri stock around the tail to smooth out airflow around the tail secton plus I also made fillets around the wing saddle area.
One problem I have run into with this plane is I have to run a small amount of down trim in it. As to date I have tried everything I can think of except changing the incencedence of the wing. As this would not be an easy task involving cutting up an already nice plane NO,NO not going to do that, I can live with it...It is balanced properly.I have tried adding more down thrust, making it more tail heavy but no avail this is the way it wants to fly.... A fun plane to fly especially with that 160 up front . A real hot rod...