I washed the fuselage, trying to keep any water off the wood formers because the front and back of the plywood firewall had started to delaminate in a few spots. The fuselage was pretty cruddy after sitting around for who knows how many years. I worked Titebond into the delaminated areas and then jammed balsa pieces in to hold it down while the glue set. There was a small delaminated spot on the formers in front and back of the wing. I’ll need to grind down and sand out the firewall rough spots, fill the some holes that were done to use a firewall mount gear and the coat it with resin. I need to rebuild the fuselage where the pipe cutout was done and some work around the engine cutout so it is not so large. There is also a hole in the nose of the fuselage apparently accidently done when the motor mounts were drilled. The fuselage weight is stout 24.5 ounces but that includes the engine mount and all the formers.

The wing and stab balsa had turned pretty yellow with age but an hour or so of sanding the wing with my long 60 grit sanding board removed the yellow, a bunch of glue smears, some water stains and trued up the sheeting and wing tips. The sheeting is bonded to the foam with some type of epoxy and is very well attached. The wing and stab look pretty good but I’m going to add larger hollow tip blocks so they fit the Blue Angel wing shape and length. The root section of the wing halves have large factory cutouts for servos that I’ll need to fill in with some scrap foam.

I’m not sure how to use the large boxes in the wings that are apparently for gear mounts. For those of you out in RCU land that have built one of these it would be great if you could give me some input on them.

To be continued…