Well guys I recently received my new Tiger Tail short kit from Don at Eureka Aircraft and have begun to stick things together. This may be a long build due to my work schedule requiring travel every other week.

The kits arrived well packaged with cores and large plywood sheets in one box and the rest of the wood in another. My building bench is a hollow core door with a Skylight window on top then a Guillows balsa building board on top of that. Its good and flat.

After cleaning off the bench I marked the fuse sides for the doublers. I don't know how many others have built 2 left sides but mine are still in the shop (no pictures though).

1st picture shows the fuse side layout. Then attached the rear balsa doublers with Zap ca and used NHP 12 minute epoxy for the front plywood doubler.

Picture 2 shows tail doublers glued in position.

Picture 3 shows my sortof crude weights to hold the doubler down (bricks). Should be good and dry by this afternoon, tonight I will do the other side.



I will keep you guys posted.


Peace

Mark O
SPA 337

Looking forward to it!

Pass the corn, Dewd!

I'll be watching this thread, too.

David

Me too! I've been seriously thinking of building a vintage pattern ship and the TT is one I've been considering. My dad use to fly one back in the 70's. I'll be interested in the kit quality, how she goes together, looks good so far.

-Johnny-

This will be a neat one..Have Fun!!

Just got back up from the shop and have some progress to report. It's kind of nice when you have to do laundry for the wife and your workshop is right next to the laundry, you don't even get in trouble.

Glued the doubler on the second side (picture 1). While the 12 minute epoxy was doing its thing I cut all the formers out of their plywood skeletons and sanded the bridges off. I then found that there is a radius on the router cut parts so I took a dial caliper and found it was approximately 1/32 inch. I then took a mill ******* file and squared up the corners (picture 2). After reading theplans and the article (supplied to me by RFJ Thanks) the actual Tiger Tail used a 1/16 balsa doubler with the grain on an angle of about 35 degrees. Whereas the Eureka uses plywood doublers. It doesn't seem to make a huge weight difference. The balsa in the fuselag parts is relatively light and decent wood.

After the doublers were sanded and checked out I attached the 1/4 square lower corner pieces (longerons) to both sides using Zap (picture 3). The top corner pieces are 1/4 by 1/2 and run from the front of the stab to the front of the plane. I have to get some 48" sticks to do them in 1 piece.

I did lay out the motor (Webra 61 Black Head) and the Dave Brown retracts for fit and weight checks (picture 4). Also had a glass of the favorite (lately) red builders beverage.

That's all I have time for tonight as I'm off on SWA 2872 doing the Chicago Midway shuffle and will be out until Friday. We only have 1 real airport in CT and it's 1 hr away so an 7:00 AM flight means a 3:00 wake up time. I will stop at Al's Hobby Shop in the Chicago area for a Dave Brown motor mount for the Webra. That way it will be a good trip.

See you next weekend.

Peace

Mark O
SPA 337

Is that the Blackhead from the Kaos? Or another one?

Nice to see another classic build hit the building board. I'll be watching with great interest!

FB

It's been a rough weekend for any progress on this building project.

Friday afernoon I arrived home from Chicago and decided to check the fuse sides. Downstairs to the shop and hit the lights and Pow out goes a ballast and smoke everywhere. So two hours with the window fan out the bilco hatch and some spray perfumy stuff to keep the wifey happy and I am back to square 1 but with no lights. Next trip was to Home Depot (in town) and a couple of new fixtures and a pack of spare bulbs and almost done.

Down to work on the firewall and do the layout for the nose gear (Dave Brown) and the motor mount (kraft KM 70) drilled in jig and pushed in all the blind nuts and test fit everything. Got some nice shots and was going to upload yesterday and Pow no LAPTOP.

So now it's off to find a new laptop and finally ended up at Wally World for a new Toshiba (cheap and I tend to kill them traveling for work) and say now I'm all set. Get up and running and find out that my photo transfer software will NOT WORK WITH VISTA.

I'll try to load the pics at work tomorrow.

Peace

Mark O

Wow, tale of woe and misfortune. Don't go flying for awhile.

I'll second that thought!

FB

Mark O, hello our first contact!

I do vacuum bagging the doublers with a refrigerator compressor and pressure regulating switch.
If you are interested ...ask me!


Cees

Alright I have lights, camera and a very little action. According to Ron Chidgey's article the way to build the fuse is to mark the fuse top and add the formers and fuse sides to it. I was able to lay out the top block with the ceterline and the locations of F1 through F6 (picture 1). I had previously finished the firewall with all the mounting holes for the engine and nosegear (picture 2). Then I added a centerline to each of the formers (picture 3). Due to the fact that I used plywood doublers on the fuselage siges I elected to replace the 1/2 x 1/4 spruce longerons with hard balsa. So that is drying and I will hopefully have a fuse blocked together this evening.

I want to see how Cees (Taurus Flyer)'s vacuum bagging process works. Sound a little more 21st century than my BRICKS for weight.

WEDJ this is another Webra 61 BH. I have 6 of them now. 2 look nice and 2 are so-so but the 4 run well the others are NIB so I should have engines for a long time.

Hope to see you at Salem this weekend.

Peace

Mark O