Richard,

My stand worked out to be about mid way between shoulders and waist, and it is glued together. The only tricky part is gluing the support brace in place. I wish I could remember just how I did it, but I'm sure with a little thought and planning you will manage. At that height it also is handy for installing your radio components, laying out paint patterns(striping, graphics,etc.), finish sanding, and just about anything that an extra pair of hands would help you do.


It's 1:15 PMhere and I'm still waiting for my wing sheeting. It's supposed to be on the truck and out for delivery, so when it does get here I guess I'll weigh it, sort it, andglue upfour planks to cover the wings. In the mean time I have been sanding on the fuselage and tail feathers in order to reduce the weight as much as possible. So far the fuse and feathers have gained 2.0 ozs. That would be from bare balsa to glassed and urethaned, readyfor paint. With any luck I will be able to achieve the same results on each wing panel.

Bill

Bill,

I haven't been to the store to look at the PVC fittings yet, but I suspect from your earlier description that they aren't bored to 2-inch inside-diameter all the way through; that there's a shoulder.

In that case, I thought one way to do the support brace would be to have the bottom (horizontal) legs one piece and ream out the T fittings so the support could slide into position. Something tells me, though, that reaming the fittings is an annoying job for which I probably don't have the necessary tool/gadget.

The other idea would be to be really careful about the length of the bottom legs. Probably be a matter of test-trim-test-trim.

One way or the other, I'll get it done.

Thank you for the tips.

Hope your sheeting arrives safely (and dry) today.

Cheers,
Richard

Richard,

Sounds like you have a handle on it. I used the appropriate hole saw wrapped with the adhesive backed sand paper to ream the T for the head piece.

My sheeting arrived, was weighed, sorted, and glued by 3:30 PM. Now I just have towait for the glue to dry. Probably until tomorrow morning. I'm guessing it will take me most of the day tomorrow to get all that sheeting fitted and glued to the wings. I am glad I ordered four more sheets than I needed as it turns outthat exactly four sheets were so badly curved on the edge from end to end that they were virtually unusable. They might be okay for ribs or some such thing. The weights ranged from 16gm. to 28gm., nine of whichcame to 22gm. All in all it comes to a substantial weight reduction over the kit supplied sheeting.

For what it is worth, I think Jeff is correct in the way he has packaged his kit, since doing it the "light way" has added another $170 to the kit price. From a marketing stand point contest balsa and CF tubing would probably not appeal to anyone but the competitive pilot or fanatics like us! And that extra cash doesn't account for other lightening methods that I haven't used(contest balsa for the fuselage and tail feathers, etc., etc.).

Bill,

A hole saw. I hadn't thought of that one, since I've never had to use one. Shall buy one when I get the pipe.

I've sorry to hear about the curved edges making the sheets unusable. A couple/few of my sheets have some edge curvature, but I think they can be used. I'll take a closer look at them tonight, though, and see if I have any replacements in my stash, or if I'll need to go the hobby shop tomorrow.

Just curious, did you try dampening the edges and then ironing them? I've never tried it; just wondered if that would work.

You're right; Jeff assembled his kits in the most reasonable way. And actually, unless you're nuts (like we are), the kit contents are excellent. Certainly better than any other kits I've purchased. True, to make the most lightening you could, you would need to use the contest grade all around. Maybe the next one.

Anyway, I'm hoping to make some serious headway this 3-day weekend. The nose gear mount and a couple other small parts arrived yesterday, so I can finish the firewall and get the fuse formers in place and, I hope, the nose blocks trimmed.

Cheers,
Richard

While you folks are building the Simla wings, I have on the board a King Altair wing. As I mentioned earlier, when I built this prototype of our King Altair kit in an earlier project with Jeff, I wanted to get the project in the air as soon as possible as we were well into fall at the time. At the time, I used the original foam wing from my RTF King I bought from a modeler getting out of the hobby, (it was my first King Altair). The wing however feels like a "brick" to me at 2lbs 2oz, and it's time to try to shave some extra ounces if possible. In an effort to improve performance, I'm building this wing with an eye toward lightness. My hope is to shave 8 to 12 ounces off the 8lb 5oz King. The performance right now is OK...but I'm going to try to improve that some.

I received my contest balsa from National today, (eight sheets of the bargain, and twelve of the "aero-light"). I haven't opened the box yet, but will tomorrow. In preparation for sheeting the wing, I shaped the L.E./false L.E. to shape so I can sheet right over it rather than up to it. To me that makes a stronger L.E.

I want to tell you about and recommend a tool from Great Planes, (if you don't already have one), that makes this job amazingly easy. Like the fuselage, you have to remove some balsa to get the L.E. to shape, and the "Power Plane" really helps, and makes it easy to get a nice, straight, smooth line. All that is required is some light final sanding with a sanding block with 80-grit paper. I did this work tonight...please forgive the slightly out of focus pictures...depth of field can be tricky sometimes.

Note the centerline drawn on the L.E....the object is to sand up to the line, but NOT to sand the line off until the finish sanding when it is very lightly rounded. This is a thick wing, (much like the Simla), but unlike the Simla, I'm going to deliberately try to get a sharper L.E. in the hopes of it cutting the wind a bit better. Right now, the King has a decided "whistle" to it as it flies by due to the "draggy" wing.

We still have to talk about the wing tips.

Duane

Duane,

Would you recommend this same procedure for the Simla wing ie-sanding the LE down to shape and sheeting over it as opposed to up to it? And what about doing the same thing for the TE? It would seemthat this method would also solve the problem of the sheeting being slightly curved from end to end. It would alsobe much easier to apply the sheeting over the edges than to fit it between the edges.

Now, about those tips. I have already rough cut them to shape and was surprised to find that they will be less than half the weight of the blocks that I started out with. Once I have them finished shaped I plan on reaming the insides out as much as possible.

As an interesting side note, with all this contest balsa substitution, there is enough balsa left over from thekitto make considerable headway on another less weight conscious model. Hmmmmm.........



Bill

Duane,

Where did you get your Great Planes Power Plane? I have been searching all morning including the Great Planes sight and have been unable to find a distributor. I am currently block sanding the leading edges with 80 grit and it is proving to be very tedious and time consuming. Help!!!!

Not a good idea [] Best to sand the false leading edge to section, apply the wing sheeting and then the leading edge otherwise you end up with a "feathery" edge on the wing sheeting which is difficult to hide when covering and finishing.

Ray

Ray,

I see what you mean; however, I have used the method that I described on other builds without any problems. I have used both cloth and glass coverings applied with urethane and had excellent results. I don't know what would happen if I used an iron onplastic covering. But thanks for the input. I'll pay more attention in the future to see what effects the over the leading edge method has that I may otherwise not havenoticed. Thanks again.

Bill

Bill,

I guess it comes down to personal preference and what works for you. Everyone has their own favorite building techniques and I've never yet built a model designed by someone else where I haven't changed something.

For example, I notice the Simla does not have spar webs, something I always use in built up wings even when they are completely sheeted. The Simla as designed is obviously completely satisfactory but if I built one I would put them in.

Following your build with interest.

Ray

Ray,

I noticed the same thing. That is why I installed the CF tubes in the wing halves after I removed the steel jig rods. I thought I would try it just to see if it made a difference. After they were glued in place, the wings did seem to be stiffer although I could still twist the assembly a bit. But then I didn't have the wings covered at the time. I suspect, however, that once the wings are covered that they will become very rigid. I'll let you know.

Bill

The spar webs improve the wings bending stiffness, not torsion. The wing skin completes the torsion box. To build in the maximum amount of stiffness, both in bending and torsion, ideally you need both. However with a wing like this, and realising the stresses are all concentrated at the middle of the wing, you can reduce the thickness of both skin and webs towards the tip. Check out the wing skinning on Tom Bretts Perigee, Tom knew what he was doing, and the skinning follows the load pattern. The bonus with the idea is that the tip weight is reduced too, so damping in roll is improved.
Evan.

Evan,

If I read you correctly the addition of the CF tubes to the wing should work well. The tubes will supply the bending stiffness and the wing sheeting will supply torsional stiffness at a minimal addition of weight. In fact the webbing probably would have added about the same weight as the CF tubes but would not have been as strong. Just my guess.

Yep, should do it so long as the ribs the tubes are anchored to can't be crushed. The idea is to keep the two spar flanges (Top and bottom bits) from touching. The webs do it by providing a vertical spacer between them. The CF tube should do it by not allowing any bend to take place anyway, thus keeping the spar flanges apart. I always think the web idea as a bit more 'elegant', as you can then 'close another torsion box' by enclosing the leading edge ('D' box) and from main spar to trailing edge spar with the skinning. Yer pays yer money...
Evan.

Well I have been working on my wing covering this weekend, and as I was getting ready to cover the bottom of the left wing I thought I would go ahead and set up the aileron servo installation only to discover a small problem. It seems that when I installed the CF tubes in the wings it cuts down on the available room for the servo. In order to solve this problem I moved the rear servo hatch mount closer to the trailing edge by the width of the mount which solved the first problem but created a new one. Now the servo will fit between the CF tube and the rear mount but the depth of the rib caused me to have to massage the servo mounting blocks until there was enough clearance to fit the servo between the top and bottom wing sheeting. A little sanding here, a little sanding there and all is well. Oh, and I had to notch the rear hatch mount to clear the servo mount block.

Bill

PS- I also laid out and cut out the fuselage sides for a Taurus. It gives me something to do while waiting for glue to set up on the Simla. 

Got a question about the fuse.

The two images show how I've tacked the pieces together as a trial fit. I'm puzzled by F4 and F9. You can see in the first image how, on the left fuse side, F4 and F9 are about 1/16-inch short of the front of the fuse side; and how, on the right side, F4 and F9 extend past the front of the fuse side by about 1/16th inch.

I carefully doublechecked that the right-side pieces are on the right side, etc.

Everything else appears to align perfectly, so either I don't understand the instructions, or the parts are mislabeled. Which is it?

Cheers,
Richard

Bill,

Thanks; I'll look out for this.

Starting another pattern plane because the thin CA just takes too long to cure? More and more I'm liking my idea of flying you out here.

BTW, I got the parts and made a copy of your stand yesterday. You're right; that support piece is a witch to get right. Of course, if I had applied a little elementary geometry to my measurements, I should have come closer to what was needed.

And if I were to do it again, I'd use the 2-inch PVC like you did, instead of the 1.5-inch. Actually, the 1.5-inch would work well for all sections *except* the vertical column which needs to be pretty sturdy.

Cheers,
Richard

Richard,

I have tried twice to reply to your posts this morning and both times the session timed out before I could make the post. Both times it dropped my post and both times they were rather lengthy. I will try again later. Right now I am suffering from disappointment and frustration.

Bill

Bill,

that would happen to me often in the past when RCU was a little more on the blink. Nowadays it seems a little more stable but sessions do timeout from time to time, especially with longer posts.

What I do to avoid the frustration is to Ctrl-C the content of my post as I type. I might do a select all followed by a copy (Ctrl-A/Ctrl-C)) every other paragraph if the post is long. Then, when it comes to posting if the session times out you can still paste the content of your post in a Wordpad document or some such. If you then "recycle" the thread with your browser button and start a new reply and paste the content into a new window, usually when you post it, it works.

Also, if you simply do a "back" on your browser when you see the timeout page, you will likely be taken back to your post page so you don't loose what you typed in case you forgot to copy (a sort of "save" if you will) the content when you were typing.

Thought it might help.

Nice builds guys.

David.

Here's another image of what may or may not be a problem. (I'm assuming it is, since the fit of Jeff's kit is normally so good that if something doesn't align properly, I've probably done something incorrectly.)

This image shows how, if I match the fuse sides at the nose, the formers (in this case, F2) are not perpendicular to both sides. At the same time, you can see that the former is exactly aligned with the alignment marks that are etched into the fuse sides. (The images in my previous post, number 341, about this had the fuse sides such that the formers were perpendicular to the sides.)

If I align the fuse sides so the formers are perpendicular to the sides, the right side is a bit less than an eighth inch behind the left side.

This puzzles me, and has put a sharp stop to my building. (I can switch to the wing, but the fuse will just be lying in wait.)

If something went wrong, I am at a complete loss as to what went wrong where. If everything is actually fine, then I didn't understand the instructions.

Cheers(?),
Richard

Richard,

I am not sure what you have done, but something is definitely not correct with your fuselage. The kit has a right and a left fuselage side, and a left and right side plywood doubler. It almost looks like you may have transposed the doublers. In other words putthe right doubler with the left fuselage side and the left doubler with the right fuselage side. When all is as it should be formersF-2 and F-3 shouldbe perpendicular to the fuselage sides and former F-1 should be angledslightly formleft to right toward the rear of the fuselageas viewed from the top ofthe fuselage if you were sitting in the cockpit. Another way of putting it would be to say that if you were sitting inthe cockpit, theright side of F-1 would becloser to your right shoulder than the left side ofF-1 would to your left shoulder. I hope this doesn't confuse you more

When I started the fuselage build I jigged the sides parallel to one anotherover the plans and glued formers F-2 and F-3 in their proper positions and perpendicular to the fuselage sides. After they set up (thirty minute epoxy) I placed former F-1 in it's palce over the plans and between the fuselage sides while aligning it with the ends of the plywood doublers. I used scrap pieces between the jig and the front of the fuselageto "pinch" the front of the fuselage in toward former F-1.


Bill

PS- I must point out that the photo I am posting is viewed from the bottom of the fuselage so that everything mentioned above appearsin reverse order. If this isunclear to you, let me know and I will try to shed a brighter light on the situation.

Ray and everyone,

During design, we discussed the need for webbing, (our comments at the time are on the Ed Kaz Taurus thread. I was in favor of using them as well, but in the end, Jeff didn't feel we needed them, and he is the engineer.

As for the L.E. and sheeting, that's how I do it, and I think it's stronger. As for leaving a line, I think it depends on what you use for adhesive, and I would use the Sig Ment to attach the sheeting the the L.E.

If the Power Plane isn't on the Great Planes or Tower Hobbies websites of catalog, then maybe they don't offer it anymore...too bad, because it sure helps, and it makes the job easy, (it works as advertised). I guess it's always a questions of offering what the people want...maybe they just didn't sell enough of them. BTW...I was talking to Kevin about it, and he has one too. Maybe somebody has one that you can borrow if they aren't available.

Duane

Word to the wise from somebody who has done that more than once. For a long post, COPY it and paste it to WORD, (or at least copy it), before sending...every time I have done that, it hasn't timed out.

Duane

Now about those wing tips. To make a long story shorter, both Kevin and I found that on our prototypes, if you cut the tips to the exact shape per plans, when you get to finishing sanding, the tips tend to DISAPPEAR, or get paper thin toward the rear of the tip. This proved frustrating, and Kevin and I had more than one conversation about it. You need to approximate the tip shape, and do the best you can to retain the look, but the tips ate not exactly the shape shown on the plans...we determines it couldn't be done and have EXACTLY that shape. Now, we told Jeff about this, and he may have changed them, but in case he didn't, be ready for this when you sand, or make them slightly larger.

BTW...The small piece of ply is NOT for "lateral balancing" as the photo caption said in the Simla article...(Michael was assuming something that wasn't there). The simple truth is, in the course of final sanding, I sanded through the sheeting, and used 1/32 ply to cover the thin spot...the truth wins out.

Duane,

I used your method to glue the sheeting to the wing frame with plain old Elmer's white glue and sanded itto a fine leading edge with no gapping or problems of any sort. It was in fact a much easier way to apply the sheeting than trying to fit it between the leading and trailing edges. If I had to do it again, I would do it exactly the same way. Thanks for that one!

I think you are probably correct about the power plane being discontinued. Perhaps if I contact Great Planes directly I might be able to beg one out of left over inventory. I think I'll try working on that tomorrow.

As far as the spar webbing, I am inclined to agree with you and Jeff. True that it would provide some crush resistance, but it appears that the closer I get to completing the wing that it would take a substantial amount of force to crush this wing. I do have to admit, however, that when I had the wings assembled to the fuselage without any covering their mere length alonemade them appear weak and spindley. Fortunately that is not the case as they approach completion.

Now about those wing tips.........................

Bill

PS- Apparently while I was composing this post you covered "those wing tips".