Here we are at the end of the month and I'm not quite finished... oh well, it's good to set a goal. (After all my son turns 6 only once!).

Some progress...

For the radio installation I decided to do something a little different (unconventional?) this time. Since my fuse wouldn't accommodate a side mount of the standard size servo, I went ahead and mounted it vertically. I first laid out the components in the radio bay to check for spacing and the possibility of relocating the battery to allow proper balance. There's a 5/16" square spacer at the bottom of the bay which divides the compartment in two. The elevator and rudder servo are located behind this divider in a staggered fashion - elevator to the side and rudder centered for the P-P setup. The battery (BT), receiver (RX) and throttle servo are in the forward compartment. I positioned the throttle servo to allow me to place the BT and RX on either side of it.

I made a servo tray out of 1/16" ply and made the necessary cutouts for the servo's. The two receivers (Spektrum 2.4 system) are installed on the tray on either side of the servo with the battery and switch hidden underneath the tray. I usually protect the RX with foam and place it off the tray but given the shape, cables and antenna's on the AR7000 I did something a little different - I first made a RX tray out of lite-ply and used velcro to attach the RX to this tray. The RX tray was then soft mounted to the servo tray with double side foam tape. The entire servo tray will be mounted to some hardwood beams using servo grommets. Hopefully this arrangement will dampen vibration on the radio components. The battery tucked under the servo tray is wrapped in foam rubber. I may wrap the main RX in foam rubber too using some narrow tape to avoid covering the velcro holding it to its tray.

I'm using GP pushrod exit guides for the elevator rods and P-P wires. I've also made progress on the tail feather fairings as well as the wing LE/fuse fairing (photos to come) - small items but required quite a bit of elbow grease. I had forgotten how badly epoxy/micro balloons sands even when the mix is quite low in epoxy. I have to go and get some resin.