Been waiting for some parts to arrive from various places to complete some of the instal so over the last week or so have been working on the fuel tanks.

When I say working let me explain. The prototype Vixen ran two large saddle tanks and a hopper amounting to around 9L of fuel capacity, the saddle tanks were long and as a result of fuel movement were also baffled. My view was they were too big and I don't like long fuel tanks for many reasons either. It has been decided to reduce the capacity of the tanks to around 6L for the two saddle tanks and a 1L hopper which gives 7L in total with a further 1L for smoke if required. This should result in the saddle tanks being more 'square' in shape, it allows them to sit almost centrally over the CG location and means no baffles are required.

Wagner is kindly working on the new moulds to make these as we speak.

For my Vixen and the deadline to have the jet ready to fly at Jetpower I have decided to 'modify' the original long tanks by literally chopping off around a third of them. The plan was to chop them to a length that allowed them to fit in the space between the wing tubes. I cut them down and then made two FR4 plates to fit the cut ends, prepped the surfaces and glued with Hysol. Once cured I sanded the seams flush and then added a strip of glass fibre cloth around the seam to strengthen.

In Germany the weight rule is 25kg wet, so the tanks have to be full which also means I did not want them to be oversized, the result is around 2.5L each which gives 5L capacity, the turbine runs at 760cc/m max power so at full throttle this will give 6.5 mins of run time, I expect the actual throttle to be half for most of the flying time so this should deliver a safe 5-6 mins of flying time.

Added my own filler hardware and will plumb over the next few days once some fittings arrive from my cnc shop.

Fitted out a simple equipment tray and will now start to make up the leads and servo cables to suit.



marcs