I still haven't glued that wing joint yet. Still not even a sign of anything weird, or flutter, or anything to make me think there's a problem.

still waiting for the DL to come in the mail []

Edit: Ya, DL is in the mail. Can't wait for it to arrive.

Hay Lou I have a question for you, when we were talking about cg you said to leave it as the manual says. for now until I get better , I installed the smoke pump today and moved things around , and now when I balance the plane it drops the tail about 2 inches. With fuel it should balance out, should I leave it or try to bring some weight forward?

Always balance without any fuel in it. Remember as the fuel burns off, the nose will get a bit heavier, unless you move th tank so the center of it is right over the CG

Couldn't agree more. The hardest part about "tail heavy" is landing. If you run your fuel or smoke oil out flying and the tanks are forward of the CG you're gonna be tail heavy for your landing. That's not going to be fun.[:@][:@][:@][:@]

The smoke oil tank is in the middle of the cg over the wing. So I am going to try to move the batteries up forward a little. Today I did not get a chance to try it to see how it works we are having a wind storm the thruway is closed of 250kph wind here at my house it is steady at 45kph gusting to about 70kph.

here are some pics of what i did.

Yeah, with your fuel tank forward you definately want to balance the plane dry.

Have you ever done something on a biuld that just really wish you could take back. Today i realized that one of my two switches for the reciever was installed so that the air moving over the plane could possible turn it off. [X(] Seems like an easy fix right? Well, the switches i ordered required me to cut out a much larger portion of the wood than i would of like. As i result, there was no way to really securley mount them with the screws provided so i glued them in with epoxy. Man I am pissed at myself.

Any ideas how i could get the epoxy to budge? The thing is, i am not really sure if this will be a problem or not untill I fly it.

Denatured alcohol. And the air cannot turn the switch off.

Moved the batt forward, and cg is ok now. Started the plane and lit up the smoke. It took a while to start but it is smoking. Now I need to adjust it some more to much oil no the ground , got it to 2.5 min for 10oz still to much oil . But it sure dose look good the whole street fogged up. 1/3 diesel 1/3 baby oil 1/3 auto trany oil . I bought 2 cases of trany oil in cocsco for $10 a case of 12 , here in Croatia it is $32 for a liter , unbelievable. not to many people here drive automatics. it is all stick vid coming soon.

The vibration factor alone would keep me from epoxying them in. Post a pic of this switch, I can't image a switch that air pressure can move [X(]

I have never had a switch turn off in the air due to air flow. I have had a switch destroy itself once because I did not properly mount it and vibrations took it out quite quickly. I use nothing but failsafe switches from Fromeco (Badger and Wolverine) now. If the fail for any reason, they fail in the on position.

If the switch is that lose that it is causing you concern, then it needs replaced. It's not worth risking a plane over

Thanks guys, just wasn't sure if the air could turn these things off. I have done this before in smaller glow planes but was concerned that the prop wash of a big gasoline engine could cause some problems. These are the EMS havy duty ON/OFF switches also.

Oh, and how does Denatured achohol help get epoxy off.

It only works if the epoxy has not cured yet. That is what you use to thin epoxy to brush it on wood for fuel proofing

That is what i figured.

Thanks

Okay guys, the DL arrived today. School ended at 11:15 today and man was i excited. I called my friend on the robotics team and we met each other at the robotics workshop. The drill press really made the job easy. We got the spinner backplate and prop drilled and i cut the spinner cone with my dremel. Took alot of dremeling but finally got it to fit the big xoar prop. I drove over to ACE and grabbed some screws for the standoffs. I downloaded the DL template and drilled through. Went in without a problem. I got to say, mounting these gasser engines is 10 times easier than glow engines. It always took me forever to get all the holes lined up for glow engines but mounting the dl must have taken me 15minutes. I mounted the ignition were the manuel had it for the fuji engine. Now, what the heck is gap clearence for the spark plug? How is that set? What is the spring that comes with the spark plug? Really excited to get this plane airborn. I have taken more time on it than any other of my planes. Been very careful on everything and hopefully it will all pay off in the air.

Oh, forgot to add that i pinned the firewall. Really happy I did that after seening the engine in person.

I believe the spark plug gap (the gap between the round electrode on the bottom of the plug and the little "L" shaped arm) is supposed to be .018-.020" set with a feeler gauge. The spring goes over the spark plug, after installation, and acts as a secondary ground for the plug wire cap. It just makes sure you have a good ground for the plug. BTW the little fiberglass piece is the original throttle arm.

Thanks for the info lou. Well, i finally got the aluminum spinner installed and unforunatley the tightening of the bolt warped the back plate and it deosn't spin tru. [] So i will have to live without a spinner untill i can buy a nicer one that has a better backplate.

Also, how do you set the gap. I don't see any way of moving that L thing closer or further from the plug.

Well, you can tap it lightly against a piece of wood or go by your local auto parts store in the morning and get a keychain spark plug gapper. It's a little round sort of thing with several tabs around its circumference that are different thicknesses for setting plug gaps. It also has a little cutout that fits over that L shaped thingy so you can bend it. Or you could just buy a feeler gage set with a plug gapper arm on it. Of course you could always do what I did and just screw the plug in and run the engine. The plugs come pre-gapped from the factory and usually work great!

cambo time gust snug tight the spinnet and use blue locktite on the screws and make sure the prop dose not touch the spinnet where you made the cut out, and good luck you will have fun with it , i am off to the feild it is about three and will post some smoke pics when i get back , i think i finaly got the ingection right . well at least my olane is very clean under neath from wiping away all the extra unburned oil.

Lou i did the mix for the knife edge and it worked grate and straight it took two setting to get it dialed in, now I need to work on the ailerons a bit but for now awesome. a pic of the smoke on the ground ,still a lot of oil but much less than before on the plane. when going straight up ward smoke looks outsight.

Glad it worked out for you buddy! Plane looks great with the smoke. I bet it's awesome in the air! Great job!!

Cambo,
be dang sure you pin the firewall and re-coat it with epoxy in the joints. You have a huge engine on that airframe and if you fly anything like I do, you will want the added security. Also, be sure to balance your prop.

And most of all remember to have fun with it!!!