Hi Bud, and best of the holiday season to you too. I am putting up a few pix to show my ideas on the D.P. Super Cub. One pic shows the plywood board I installed on the floor of the cockpit, to carry the batteries all the way forward...where fingers cannot reach...and by removing those (4) allen head screws..quick and easy to do..I can slide out the board and service the batteries/wiring. The batteries are strapped on with velcro, just like the fuel tank. Rather than for service, the board is really there to enable me to get the weight of the batteries way up forward where it is needed to achieve proper CG balance. Obscured by the power switch is the mini Hitec servo I use for the throttle. It works well and is very neatly out of the way. The red velcro tab on the board is where my on board glow fits. It is currently removed for repair/replacement.
The windshield pic shows (2) tiny button head screws holding it onto the airframe. There are (2) on each side. I did this initially so that I could fly the plane and check things out in the air before glueing it in and sealing off the big front access to the cockpit. Now, after seeing how well it holds, I may never glue the windshield in. Being able to remove the windshield provides wonderful access for working on a scale interior, or just maintenance. What a nice difference when you can get one hand in the front and the other hand through the top.
The motor pic shows a number of my innovations. I tried to keep from making holes in the cowl..so...my fueler is located on the side, and access to it is very reasonable where the cowl sticks out an inch or so from the fuselage sides. I did have to solder the fueler tip onto a three inch piece of brass tubing in order to get the thing plugged in. Nothing shows when the cowl is on.
There were just too many problems trying to make the stock Saito exhaust fit inside the cowl, so I opted for the Saito flex exhaust, with a pressure nipple for the fuel tank. It works beautifully, and the sound is no louder than the stock muffler, and in fact, the exhaust note sounds a little better too. I made one concession to holes in the cowl...I bored out for the exhaust, centered on the bottom, and then slit the cowl from that hole aft, so that I could gently bend the cowl along the point of the slit, and slide the cowl on, or take it off, without removing anything from the exhaust system. I found that when running, the flex pipe would vibrate violently. It needed some stabilization. I installed a piece of piano wire, strapped to the firewall with those little landing gear straps, and then just put a hose clamp around the flex, and the piano wire, and then just tightened it all up. The hose clamp isn't pretty, but no one hardly ever sees it, and it was quick and cheap, and it keeps the vibration from destroying the weld joint where the flex meets the solid pipe. The flex tube does stick down quite far...and that could be shortened for scale appearance...but a very nice side benefit is that it keeps a lot of the exhaust goo from covering the landing gear. That is appreciated at clean up time. While the On-Board_Glow is out for repair, I am installing a simple remote glow connector, directly below the fuel filler. You can see the notch I made to allow the tiny bracket to fit flat onto the firewall. The bracket actually allows the connector to sit further back that the fueler, making it easier to get to. Again, no holes in the cowl. The last pic shows my wing strut connectors. Rather than fumble with a bunch of 4-40 screws, and have to use two tools to tichten them in place...I simply bent a 4-40 threaded rod to fit the strut mount, and now I can tighten them with just a nut driver. I put a little shrink tube on them just for looks. They have worked out quite well.
Well friends, thats it for now.
Happy Holidays.
Jim