Well, here I am "sharing" again. I got picked on at Jetero for the title of this thread, but hey if you cant share you dumb mistakes and laugh about them with your friends then whats life good for huh?


I have the plane repaired. I went to the Jetero contest to see all of my friends this weekend and it inspired me to get cracking. Lone Star made some suggestions as to how to make the repair as well as SWK (thanks guys) and so I took their advice and started working on it.. Within 2 hours I had it back in surprisingly good shape again.

Here were the tasks I had to tackle.

1. CA the lateral crack in the fuse back in place. I was extremly careful with it and only had some 1 tiny area of foam disentegrate.. I filled this void with epoxy and microballons and it feels more solid than before.
2. Glass it from the inside. I laced 6oz fiberglass over the edge of the pipe tunnel on both sides and extended it over onto the walls of the fuselage.
3. RE secure the DEPS support bar. It had broken away from the fuse.
4. CA and glass the 2" split down the belly of the plane just behind the exhaust exit hole.
5. CA and glass the fuselage where it cracked just behind the firewall. It was really just a superficial crack in the paint so I CA'ed and then glassed with 3/4oz glass.
6. Re glued the servo mounting tray in place.. Last time I used medium CA, this time I used epoxy and micro balloons.
7. Repaired a couple of superficial cracks in the chin cowl.
8. While I was at it I replaced the original landing gear (which had split several times and I got tired of repairing) with the new gear that Central Hobbies is carrying. I also raised the wheelpants up about 3/8". They looked nice down low, but the gras was eating them up.

Bottom line is its ready to fly right now and I am very surprised at how well it went back together. Lone Stars tips on how to go about meticulously refitting and CA'ing the skin of the fuselage back in place(felt like I was putting Humpty Dumpty back together ) was a marked success for me.. The fuselage looked like hell, but after moving things back in place and tacking it with CA until the glass was in place really made for a clean repair.. Its just a small line down the side of the fuse,, its significant, but unless you are looking for it its barely noticeable. And where the buckle lines are,, is stiffer than the other side of the fuselage.. I think its going to be just fine. Thanks a bunch guys for the tips, both of you probably didnt even realize how much you were helping me at the time..

Now, we will see how it flies.