OK all, here are the series of pictures... I finally finished the bird this eve... I have to say it turned out better than expected. I put this plane together for a beater to throw in the bed of the truck to fly when I go camping, or when out in the desert... I ended up with a pretty good looking stick that should fly great.

I am going to attach a lot of pics in a series. From start to finish - I started out bench assembling to see what it looked like, then stripped off the HIDEOUS decals on the wing and all the blue covering. I added some checkerboard for visibility and then started cutting. I cut the covering away from the rear fuse section, then made the servo trays. I mounted the servos transversely so that they screwed into the plywood on the fuse, it made for a stronger connection to the frame. I fab'd 4-40 pushrods and used Dubro HD hardware and HD servo arms. After the servos were mounted and set up, I cut away the other sides covering and mounted the battery as far aft as it would go.. I was going to use a Li-Ion battery, but I needed all the weight I could get.. so I used a 2000 Mah NiMh for ballast. I also mounted the switch / charger jack and regulator. I then sealed everything up and it was ready to mount the engine. I sealed the control surfaces and then was ready to set final CG. Perfect at 4" behind LE.

As I had said the post above, I ditched that boat anchor HUGE aluminum backplate on the G26 and made a plate from 1/4 ply. It was WAY lighter. Pics show the routed out sections to clearance the rear crank bolt and magneto. I also drilled out the threads on the 3 mounting holes and simply used 8-32 bolts and blind nuts so mounting was a snap. I also show a few pics of my throttle linkage.. not super elegant, but well proven with my other planes.


Finally, the last pics show the completed plane. All said and done, I was very very pleased with the weigh-in. 11.4 pounds. This thing should fly great.

I'll post a follow up when I put her in the air. Its been really windy here the past week, so hopefully Thursday...

DP