Alright, yet another SSE being built! I'm sure everyone is either head-over-heels in love with this plane, or sick of hearing about it by now.

I haven't really posted here before, but I wanted to change that. I started in nitro planes and flew them for a few years while I was in college, but dropped out of it toward the end of school due to time constraints. Now that I have a real job and a bit more free time, I wanted to get back into RC flying. Earlier this spring I got a Raptor 50 heli, and have just about put two gallons through it. It's exciting, but nerve racking at the same time. I've gotten past basic hovering, but it's going to take a long time before I can do any sort of aerobatics with it. I wanted to get an airplane again so that I could have something to toss around the sky and not wreck my nerves or my heli. So, I picked up the SSE a week ago and started on it on Tuesday. This will be my 6th plane build. I'm certainly not the most advanced builder, but so far every one who has seen my planes has commented that my build quality is amazing, so I guess I will see what everyone here thinks.

A little bit of background on my building styles and techniques. For building planes, I use mostly CA. Of course, I use epoxy at the places where strength is really needed. My preferred epoxy is West Systems, but I will use 5min or 30min standard 1:1 epoxy if I just need a small amount or don't need quite the strength/assurance that West Systems supplies. As an aside, one of my other hobbies is high power rocketry, and after building many rockets I got quite used to using, applying and manipulating epoxy and fiberglass. Sometimes, such as if I need a little more working time with a part or want strengthen a joint a bit more, I will use wood glue. Mostly I use it as a fillet along joints to strengthen it once I've already joined the pieces together with CA, joints such as fuselage to formers, wing ribs to sheeting, spars to webbing, etc.

Back to the main point. So far I have completed the stabalizer/elevator and fin/rudder assemblies. I extended the rudder by approximately 5/8". Not many other modifications are planned for the rest of the plane. I will be replacing the stock tail-wheel wire with a 60 size Dubro tail-wheel unit. Also, I will be mounting the engine sideways and making a fiberglass cowl for it using a 2.5" spinner, just as yel914 did on his SE. I also am going to mostly copy his covering scheme (having received his permission already). I'm also going to try and tint the canopy using the Rit Dye method.

For power, I picked up a SuperTigre 45. I've only used OS engines and one HB 61 up until now. A fellow flyer down here had a SSE for several years with a ST 45 on it, and he said he loved the engine. It seemed to have enough power to pull the plane around. Our altitude here, 4,800', is somewhat of a concern. I just found out a short while ago that he crashed the SE and now has the ST 45 in yet another plane, and it's still flying strong.

On a side note, I ended up constructing my own building board for this build as the table that I used to use had a big shelf on it and is no longer acceptably flat. I just took a sheet of 2'x4' 3/4" MDF, 8 adjustable furniture feet and T nuts, all from Home Depot, and made a building board that can be adjusted at 8 points. This way you can sit it on even a warped surface and still be able to level it out for a flat building surface. It's not perfectly flat, but I stretched strings diagonally from corner to corner and adjusted the feet so that there is no more than 0.5mm variance in the surface. I think that's pretty good for having only invested $16. I put the usual sheet of ceiling tile on top of the MDF, let it settle down with some weights on it, and now have an acceptable building surface. I will also post some pictures of this setup. While I do wish I had the setup to build with magnets on a steel sheet or similar, that's just completely not feasible with the space and budget constraints that I have right now. Besides, I built my previous planes on a flat table with a ceiling tile, and they all came out just fine.

Anyways. I will take some pictures this evening when I get home and I will certainly try to keep up with posting as I build.

As promised, here are the first round of pictures. You can see the completed tail feather assemblies. I also glued together the wheel pants. The seams leave something to be desired, but I will get them smoothed down. Speaking of, I am planning on using plastic film (Monokote or Ultracote, whichever I end up getting) to cover the wheel pants. If I need to use some sort of filler material and sand it down, what should I do to prep over that so that the covering will stick to it?

Also, there is an overall picture of the building board that I made, as well as a picture showing the adjustable feet underneath the baord. Personally, I think it's a neat solution for obtaining a flat building surface, but I would suspect I'm not the first one to do it, or some variant thereof.

Next up is to start buidling the wings. I like starting with the tail assemblies for some reason. It just gets me into the right mind for working on a plane and not jumping in straight to a more critical object like the wings or fuse.

Looks great!! I built two SSE's and they're great planes.

Hey now, you are creative! That building board should be useful to quite a few people. Your build looks great so far. I really appreciate all the folks that take the time to photograph their builds. I for one usually can't be bothered. Thanks for the kind words about my SSE. A bit of an update on my plane. I crashed it about 6 months ago (stupid thumbs) and bought it from the nose to the wing. I rebuilt it again and have flown it about a dozen times so far. I do have a bit of a problem with the low end, dead sticks at idle, but the plane is overall a complete blast to fly. I also tried this plane with an OS .46 AX and 11x6 prop. The performance is noticably better with the ST .45 and the same prop.

yel914- always like seeing your SE with the cowl. I have a ragged SE that I had to rebuild too after it was given to me by the owner who was tired of repairing it. I also had a midair with another SE after that. Is that landing gear from BJ's? I just got one for a plane I'm building.

I think Krylon makes a stained glass spray paint. I have a can of their frosted glass stuff to test. The colors may be transparent enough to beat dyes. I found this at an arts and crafts shop. I think it is Krylon.

I managed to not do a whole lot today due to the fact that I made the 80 mile (one way) drive to the hobby shop to pick up supplies. I finally decided on the covering and colors; Ultracote Cub Yellow, White and Pearl Blue. I decided on Ultracote because I have heard many poor things about Monokote recently. I haven't totally settled on how I'm going to cover it, but I'm going to be using yel914's covering job as the base. Imagine yel914's plane, with Cub Yellow instead of red, and with Pearl Blue design/accents across both the yellow and white portions. Also, the underside of the wing will be Pearl Blue and Cub Yellow checkers. Should stand out quite a bit.

I picked up the .60 size Dubro tail-gear and have fitted it already to the rudder. I ended up bending my own wire for it since I felt the one it came with was a bit too short and I wanted about another inch to the wire. On an important side note, I'm going to keep the hinge point of the tail gear in line with the hinge of the rudder. This means that due to the slight angle at the aft end of the fuse, I'm going to have to make some sort of small wedge or something for the tail gear block to mount to. Shouldn't be a big deal though and it will relieve stress in the hinging system, and thus less of a load on the servo.

Also, I found a spinner I like. I never knew there were spinners with aluminum backplates. I didn't want to go full aluminum due to the weight and cost, so this is a nice compromise. The aluminum ring will be a nice accent I think.

Finally, I found a nice deal at Home Depot. A four pack of 6" clamps for the price of two. Sweet. Clamps are always useful. They may be a bit more difficult to use as opposed to the small versions of the clamps, but then again, they will certainly have more squeezing power. [8D]

That's all for now. Once I get the tail feathers out of the way, which should be tomorrow, I will start laying out the wing.

BLW, Yeah that's a BJ industries landing gear. I was advised not to use them as they are weak and bend easily. Inspite of the warning, I bought them anyway. Guess what. They bend easily! I advise against them. I currently have the polished aluminum version without the holes and they are great.

Started work on the right wing today. First off, I came up with a simple way of aligning and gluing the spar doubler. I simply lined it up over the full length spar prior to gluing and then ran two pins down through both sticks (seen in the pictures). I then pulled the spar doubler up some, applied a bead of glue between them, and then just pressed it back down letting the pins guide it. I put a few weights on top of the doubler just to try and hold it down as flat as I could, though I don't know how effective it was since the joints set up quick with the CA. Viola! Four nicely done spars in a few minutes time and they all came out without any noticeable bends or warps.

On the aileron servo mounts, I put an extra piece of wood on the backside of the mount where the screws go into. This just gives the screws a little extra material to bite into.

Finally, I got the ribs lines up and glued down. I'm going to keep checking the ribs as I build up the wings to make sure they stay at 90 degrees to the board, paying close attention to the root rib.

As I said before, I use CA for most of the build. Sometimes I feel apprehensive about using CA on more critical areas such as the spars and root ribs, but then I think "wait, with a well done CA joint, the joint will still be stronger than the wood, so it doesn't matter what type of glue you use." I figure it's just a matter of preference, right? I crashed my first plane, a Four-Star 60 after 5 flights, and I built the thing mostly with CA, except where epoxy is needed, and I cannot recall a single joint that broke, just the wood.

That's all for now.

yel914- oh well on the BJ gear. Sure looks nice. I'll order the plain one if mine is too soft like you said. It is the 60 sized one. I have another plane that came with a super soft dural gear. I made a saddle mount thing of ply that overhangs the bend a little and presses firmly against each side to keep it from flexing. It works.

Didn't get a whole lot done today. This build is going slow. [] I'm normally much quicker than this. Perhaps it is because I'm just being extra perfect about every little thing. Also, I don't really have a whole lot of time in the evenings. All my free time is on the weekends. Anyways.

Got the LE and TE glued on and started on the shear webbing. The shear webbing is really what is slowing me down right now since I'm measuring and cutting and sanding and checking and sanding more. At least it will result in a perfect fit. No special tricks were used, so just an updated picture of the wing.

TNT makes a great landing gear for the SE I have an aluminum one and it works well. I use nylon bolts to hold it on.

Jinzo- buzzingb is right about modifying it to use nylon bolts. I did the same thing.

Finished up the top part of the right wing tonight. Have a few tricks to detail.

For putting on the leading edge sheeting, I first glued the front edge to the inside edge of the shaped leading edge as the manual suggested. Took my time to sand down some of the front of the ribs so I would get a relatively flush fit between the sheeting and the leading edge. Then, I sprayed some water on the outside surface of the sheeting and spread it around. No big trick there. Then, applied CA along the ribs and top spar. Here is the trick I used, shown in the pictures below (after the sheeting was on, I wasn't going to try and take pictures and install sheeting at the same time ). I took a piece of angle aluminum that I had, and held it down with a fair amount of pressure on the sheeting at the leading edge. I then slowly slid it back along the sheeting maintaining pressure and keeping a little bit of pull on the sheeting toward myself. I then held the bar in place above the spar and took my free hand and made sure the sheeting was making contact with all the ribs. It worked quite well actually.

A trick for sanding the TE to match the slant of the ribs, though I'm probably not the first one to do this; use a large, heavy object, or some sort of block to hold the trailing end of the outside ribs in place. This way the whole TE won't go back and forth when you sand it. Also, having a vacuum cleaner handy is nice to get all the balsa dust off the board.

So, I ended the night with all the top sheeting in place. I will pull it off the board tomorrow, trim down the overhang on the root and the tip, and proceed from there.

By the way, lots of people on the forums talk about replacing the stock landing gear for the SSE. I'm assuming this is just for extra clearance, correct? I fly off of a rolled dirt runway, so I don't have to worry about grass. Right now I'm planning on trying an 11x4 prop initially as that is what my trusted friends at my LHS suggested, and I don't think that will have any clearance issues with the stock gear. Also, speaking of nylon bolts, are they used instead of steel bolts so that the gear will snap more easily if it is forced and not rip the mount out of the fuselage? I have thought about replacing the gear if it really is of benefit, but otherwise I just can't see spending another $30 to replace something I already have when I'm already having to get the Pitts muffler since I'm doing a cowl. Anyways.

Cheers!

Yes, from everything I"ve read the replacement gear is to allow more clearance in the front for a larger prop. I've ordered an aluminum gear replacement from TnT - I'll let you know know it stacks up to the origional when it arrives.

So you're going to build up a balsa cowl too? Do you have any preliminary plans of what shape your going to make? On mine I'll probably end up making the top and left side cowled and the bottom and right side open. The enginehead and pitts muffler I have extend out beyond the firewall on the right, and the exhaust pipes go down on the front.

Nice build, keep up the good work.

I am using the stock gear. Drilled 1/4 holes for the bolts. Epoxied hardwood blocks and tapped them for the nylon bolts.

Yes, they are meant to sheer under stress and impact and save the fuselage. I've had them work as advertised with no damage to the plane. Was back flying 5 minutes later.

Pulled the right wing off the board today and trimmed and sanded the root and wing tip down. Came out very nice. I did have to go back and reglue a small section of center sheeting, but no big deal. I also put some glue fillets in a few areas just to be sure that a good joint was made. I got the wing tube glued in place using wood glue, and superglued the servo wire tube in place.

While the board was empty, I made the ailerons. Problem is, I made two right ailerons instead of a right and a left... HAHA!

Since the right wing is sitting aside right now so the wood glue can dry, I'm setting up the left wing panel. Once that's off the board, I'll finish the right panel while the wood glue on the left panel dries, and then go back to finishing the left panel. All a matter of planning ahead. However, one thing I didn't plan ahead for was how much CA I was going to need. I've already gone through a 1/2 oz. bottle. Should have gotten a slightly larger bottle. Ah well, I'll get one on Saturday.

So far I'm quite pleased with how the kit is going together. Of course, being the worry-wart that I am, I'm worried about the joints being strong enough with just CA. Of course, I've built all my planes like this, yet it doesn't keep me from worrying.

That's all for now. I likely won't get much done tomorrow since I have to go to rehearsal for a play I just signed up for.

Here's my version of a balsa cowl on the SE. I'd never done a cowl like this before so I just copied what a friend has on a scratch built plane. The right side still needs some work but it is pretty much open; it has to be to be able to remove & install the engine. I'm not completely happy with the way it turned out but it should work OK for a first attempt.

For a first attempt, I think you did well. The main problem I see with a cowl on the SSE is that you need to go from a square shape to a round one in about 4 1/4". A large 2 to 2 2 1/2" spinner helps ease the transition. Chuck, you may look at putting holes in the plywood ring behind the spinner. Then you can access the bolts that go through the engine mounts to the firewall. You might be able to remove the engine and mounts as a unit.

I'm planning on building up a balsa cowl on the SSE I'm building as well ([link=http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/m_4653108/tm.htm]Thread here[/link]) But I haven't figured out the logistics of installing the engine once the cowl is installed. The easiest thing I'm thinking of is just to tack glue the cowl to the firewall while building and once built remove it and install blocks on the firewall and using screws to attach it. My other option would be to glue the cowl to the fuse, giving a cleaner look, and drill holes in the faceplate and remove the engine/mount as a whole unit. Anyone have thoughts on these two methods?

After it is all done, I wish I'd built it for a 2.5" spinner instead of 2.25". I will probably add some holes to the ply ring just in case I need to tighten or remove the mounts. Once it's covered though, it should look nice and be something different.

I used t-nuts in my engine mount so I don't have to worry about access for holding a hex nut. There is just enough room to slide the engine in and out. I secured the engine with allen-head bolts. The cowl is glued permanently to the fuselage. I plan on doing it again on my next kit, a highly modified, scratch built 4-star. This time I am going to add something to make the bottom of the fuse a little more round and maybe increase the curvature on the top. This will make the cowl look a little better I think.

jinzo,80 mile drive oneway to the hobby shop"YOU GOT TO BE HARDCORE[X(]" This plane is very nice to fly.Just don't be to close to the ground when you flip ailerons onto high rates

stefanP

I just finished my SE and here she is. It took three weeks and I am maidening her tomorrow. I figured I better get some pics before the flight. This is my first kit and I think it came out pretty good. Now on to a 28% ege 540 kit. Good luck with yours, looks good so far. Here is my Mustang and Corsair also.

Tom

Just wanted to let everyone know that I'm still here. Stuff happened with my car (real, not RC ) and I've been dealing with it the past couple of days. With the long weekend, I'm hoping to be able to finish the wings tomorrow and Monday, and then start getting the fuselage on the board. As usual, I will post progress pictures when they happen.

1080tommy: Very nice SSE. Good luck with the maiden flight and please don't re-kit the plane. I'm getting nervous about flying mine once I finish it since I haven't flown a plane in a couple of years. But then again, I have been flying my helicopter some, so I would hope that I'm sensitive enough on the sticks by now.

Thanks. I maidened the SE today and you are in for a treat. A really good flying airplane for sure. The thing rolls at twice the speed as my Mustang or Corsair and comes in on final nice and soft. Those warbirds really take a lot of flyin to land. This was a nice change of pace and can do some really cool manuvers. You'll love it. Good luck on the rest of the kit looks great so far.


Tom