I recently bought my wife a highwing trainer at a fun fly/swap meet. she likes the plane but wants to change the colors. she picked up some monokote that she wants to use and a heat gun and iron. I've never covered a plane before so I had her get a roll of cub yellow so I could practice on a plane I crashed and have been rebuilding. I think by the time I've finished recovering my Cub I'll be ready to cover her plane. but here's my question, on my Cub I've had to rebuild the entire tail including the stabs and control surfaces. I'm covering everything on mine seperately then going to trim the covering and rehinge it like when I first built the ARF. how do you recover a plane thats already built? do I have to cut the stabs out of the fuse and remove the hinges or is there a way to cover the plane complete?

Covering with the stabilizers already installed is not too bad. A lot of folks do it that way anyhow. Just cut a small strip of covering for the angle where the pieces meet, and iron it in place. Then cover the rest of the surface.

As for the hinges, I prefer to cut the control surfaces off, cover everything, and then install new hinges. Some people cover after they hinge. It partly depends on the type of hinges. If they are CA hinges, they are easy enough to cut off and install new ones. If they are pinned hinges or Robarts, it's a little harder to re-hinge, but I would still rather reinstall the hinges than try to get the covering in between them.

On a trainer, they are most likely CA hinges. I would just cut them off and install new ones.

Good luck.

Take the time to purchase a book on covering it will be save you the longer learning curve.

The "small strip" that mclina referred to can be seen in the first video in this article:

http://www.rcuniverse.com/magazine/a...article_id=726

Yup, that is where I learned to cover. If you can't get MinnFlyer to come to your house and cover your plane for you, this is the next best thing.

Hey Minnflyer will come to your house. He's that kind of guy.

Only if he's making dinner

Oh Brother, have you seen sportrider COOK????[][]

You are a lot faster than I am, It takes me four or five dinners to cover a plane.

Don

thanks for the info, I covered the J-3. it came out ok for a first attempt. my wife decided to cover her own plane. I think for now on she can cover mine too

On a serious note. I have recovered both ways. The wing is not to bad to cover hinged. The tail feathers are a pain. When I did it I left the old covering in the hinge lines about 1/4" out. Then stuck the new right up to the hinge line. This worked and the job looks nice. It's just that it took twice as long as it would have taken to cut them off and rehinge them.

David