Freak Louisiana weather kicked in yesterday- Beautiful 83 degree day, with 20-25mph winds all day. Since I didn't want to deal with the wind, I decided to get some work done on this edge. (Of course today it's back into the lower 50's just like 2 days ago.)

Few little things I changed - I installed some DuBro 5/32 axles for the LG - I just don't like the "bolt through the LG" axle setup on any model. When tightening the 4mm bolts that held the LG halves to the fuse, one of the blind nuts stripped out. I knocked all 4 stock blinds out, and replaced with 1/4-20 blinds, and nylon bolts. I had to cut through the sheeting in the fuse radio compartment to get access to the blinds and LG block. LG block looks sturdy, and is 2 pieces. Good amounts of epoxy visible on all.

I'm going to try internal antenna routing down the fuse and out at the tail - I took a scrap piece of Ny-rod and fed it through the hardwood piece in front of the tailwheel assembly I have installed. My earlier concerns with the supplied tailwheel bracketry might have been a little harsh - I'm going to actually use the supplied parts on a different kit I'm scratchbuilding.

You can compare the picure I posted a few posts back of the F1 former and the pics below to see how much sanding I needed to get the DuBro 14oz tank to fit - it wasn't much hassle at all, and should give some longer runtimes for little weight gain.

The majority of my work was surrounding the motormounts - I really want to buy a Saito 100 or the new 125 in the near future, and it might end up in this airframe. It happens that I have a friend's 100 sitting in my shop that I can use to set the plane up with. Comparing the 100 to my OS 61FX I was surprised to find that they have almost exactly the same width between mounting beams, and the drive washers are maybe 2mm different when the mounting lugs are lined up. The 100 should truly be plug and play if I upgrade from the 61FX. The only issue is that the cowl on this plane can't easily be adjusted forward - you really only have about 3/16 inch of fore/aft adjustibility on the fuselage. with the cowl set on the plane I was measuring just over 4.5" from firewall to the nose of the cowl. With the 100 sitting in the stock motormount, the drive washer was almost 5" from the firewall.

To modify the motormounts to clear the Saito's carb/needle, I had to cut the top lug off, and some of the stress webbing out. You can see in the pic how much I had to cut to clear the 100's carb throttle arm. I also ground off the tabs on the mount that would have been the part of the mount actually touching the firewall. I'm sure that was designed to transmit less vibration to the firewall, but I had to get another 1/16 inch whereever I could to move the engine closer to the firewall.

I also figured out what one of the random pieces of lite ply in the kit was - the upper firewall brace. I coated it with thinned epoxy to fuelproof it, and will install it down the road.