not yet....been slammed with work, and businesses. I have been also trying to get some other projects ready. How is yours coming along?

Rebuild commencing once again....

Ok here i am back again with commencing the rebuild of my GPlanes Learjet 40.
To get things started i wanted to re-assemble the model to get some encouragement into myself and power to do it again. I'm out of 1/4" square stocks so i have to wait till Monday b4 i can get those, so in between i went through my wood box and found enough 3/32" sheeting to do the fuselage with it and the sections of the wing. I haven't made any reinforcement pieces as yet but i will, so far fuselage is re-glued with CA and epoxy.

lookin pretty good!! I have yet to finish mine, been tied up with a trex 600 project. I dont have but a few little things to do.

I found long 2" wide strip of 1/4" thick balsa in my scrap wood box, took it out and marked three 1/4" wide strips on it length wise, then i cut them out with my xacto knife and woula!!, i have my stringers!. Started to glue the stringers on the bulkheads full length wise first and then once glue had dried i cut them off and former behind cockpit hatch.

On one of the old stringers i had to be sanded 1/16" x 2"L deep as it was distorted there and then i added a piece from scrap 1/16" sheeting and sanded it lightly until all was flushed and even. I also had to make strengthener fillet at the center of the fuselage which also supports the top sheeting.

One side of the fuselage top sheeting is also added on top of the stringers n bulkheads, i used full length of 3/32" x 4"W sheet to do this. Since it had to wrap around the top of the fuselage curvature, i used hot water to help wood grain soften up, this helped great for sheeting to nicely curve around the fuselage. I used mix of medium CA and Aliphatic resin as source of glue to attach this sheeting.

Batteries of my camera died so i couldn't take any pics with sheeting on and pinned to the stringers n bulkheads.

Left side sheeting is fully dried now, preparing to add right side sheeting now.

Right side sheeting is now glued on the fuselage.

Hey Pat,

How did your top of fuse sheeting aligned against the top cockpit hatch?

I got a 3/32" step between the sheeting and the cockpit hatch, did you had this problem too or not.

I'm thinking to raise the back of the cockpit hatch to by adding filler strips under it so it would be perfectly level with the top sheeting.

Fuselage sheeted from both sides.

Pictures of the sheeting step i mentioned in ^^post.

Mine lined up pretty true with only minor sanding.

Hmmm , Interesting isn't it...

I'm going to add long 1/8" wedge strips under the both sides of the hatch and then add light balsa fillet between hatch's back and the fuselage, this should fix the minor....

Did some more work on this model last night and still doing it now.

Looks like these Learjets really love me and all the hard work i have do on them. They like my sweat and blood for sure. 1st picture will illustrate what i mean.

Last night i made couple for front rib reinforcement pieces, i use actual newer ribs to trace out the profile on to the wood and then cut them out. I had to make them fit perfectly by sanding more on top and bottom as this wing's ribs have bit of different shape and size to original ones!. Then i mixed 30 min epoxy and glued then butt against the original ribs and pinned them to fully cure over night.

I looked through the other servos openings and it seems that there is more internal damage then i first anticipated, both sides shear webbing of the root rib is damaged as if wing mounting dowel pins were pushed back at the time of crash. Anyways no worries as i will make newer openings in the wing's skin sheeting to add newer webbing in those areas.

While i was test fitting newer rib pieces, initially it was tight fit, so i had to make small insertion hole from other side to put long screw driver in to help push out those pieces before they were sanded and glued on to the ribs.

More pics..

Did some more progress on the Lear, cleaned up the top edge of the ribs on the bottom of the wright wing, then had to cut a piece of sheeting to make it fit over the ribs. This took bit of extra care and angles and notch wasen't so easy to do so but it worked out good in the end.

Wing was mounted in the fuselage saddle also to make sure it fits properly, which it did and also added plastic belly pan also to do the proper alignment check. Looked pretty good fit.

Im planning take of the cap strips from the top of the ribs and add solid sheeting there on both top n bottom of the wing, this will make wing more rigid and will be easily glassed also. Same goes for fuselage too, once whole airframe is glassed it will become very strong structure.

This Learjet will replicate Sky Service Airlines business jet livery. For many many years i wanted to do this livery on my LJ, well this one will get it..

Still making slow but sure progress[sm=49_49.gif] on the bird.

The impact was so high that 1/4" plywood dihedral brace also got damaged by the dowel wing mounting pins as seen in picture below. Pin is where it should be but area around is chewed out!, now this is goign to be another difficult task to make a hard wood piece that would fit in the that opening and around the dowel pin.

Almost same situation is on the front LE section where pin is mounted, you can 3/4 of all around pic structure is missing!. For this i used 1" x 1/2" x 1/2" hard balsa piece from scrap box. I had to clean the original area and square it out, then i cut the block to match the size and drilled out the block to wrap around the dowel pin. This actually worked out pretty good as you can see in the pictures. I will epoxy it in place and then sand it to right shape and contour of LE after i fix the dihedral brace first.

A section of glassed sheeting had to me cut out so i could use knife and file to square out the opening in the brace. I find working with square shapes is a lot easier the odd ball shapes.

Hello guys!

Haven't posted since a long long time, but mine has maidened (june 21st) and it flys good!
I had to add 5 ounces of lead to the tail to balance and came out around 7 lbs 3 ounces. The first flight with the OS 46ax and a 10 X 7 prop was a bit hairy due to lack of speed (full thottle most of the time), on a 600ft paved runway I ended up using 500`... I switched to a 10 X 8 for the second flight and it is now much better. Really stable in the air and landings a lot easier than expected, just keep a bit of speed and the nose down.

The maiden take off video is here, white plane on a grey sky didn't show too well in the air.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=l0Ll9jVGQ3M

And here are a few pics, I did the classic color scheme on the box, after all I've been looking at it for 10 years... So finish your learjets guys, it's a great bird to see in the air!

Hey Full rudder...

Congrats on maiden of you LJ and this is the first time have seen one of theses Gplanes LJ fly in videos. It looked as it had good authority in air and flew good, mind you guy taking video lost it in silhouette but still seemed pretty good. Since you had to add tail weight on this stock fuselage to balance, i suppose if i had stretched the fuse on my LJ it would have got worse to balance it then!. I wonder how it be if you were to use 9" with high pitch prop on it!....
I currently look to find 50 or 55sz engine for my LJ,i don't want to take another chance with 46...

I wanted to plain down the extra thickness of the fuselage sides as you can see in 1st two pictures, for some reason these sides didn't properly lined up with the firewall. So before i plain sides down i wanted to make right side fuselage frame and firewall attachment joint more solid and rigid. For that i drilled 3 holes from the outside to into the firewall and added plywood toothpicks in those holes with 12 minutes H9 epoxy. I made sure i had lots of epoxy filled in the holes b4 i added toothpicks. This is anchor fuselage side frame to the firewall with rigidity.
Soon as the epoxy is fully cured, i will cut off the access length of picks and then plain down both sides.

Always good to have spare new kit handy in case of blotch days[]...

While epoxy is still curing, i thought to see how i can reinforce the side frame and it's doubler from inside. Well this time i have spare new kit of LJ also handy, i went in the kit and pulled out new side frame and took it's punch outs out. Since they are same size and would easily fit into frame cut outs i thought nothing could be better then this to use instead of making them from scratch!. I still had to make them fit into these frame cut outs by sanding them. It's weird that these newer parts wont fit straight!. Anyhow first i applied bead of medium CA on the cracks just to fill them and then all round inside of these two cut outs so newer pieces could be glued in as reinforcements. It worked out pretty good. Take a look.

Trying to find my wood plainer for last couple days!, heck i can use 80 grit paper on the block to do the cockpit sides also.....

I'm also looking for Great Planes Lear Jet 40 spinners Part number GPMQ4542.

These are 2-1/4" (57mm) long pointed type made out of white plastic spinners. I need two of these, if anyone has them, le me know. Thanks

Did you check inside the connie short kits?

You could contact TruTurn and ask if this spinner will fit your need. It's 2 1/4" anf fits the GP F-15 and F-14 kits

Only bad thing is it isn't white (available anodized Blue, Gold, Purple, Red and Black)

[link=http://www.truturn.com/cgi-bin/store/agora.cgi?p_id=tt2282b:13&ppinc=spinners130&exact_ match=on]TruTurn Spinners[/link]

Don

Don,

Thanks for pointing me towards tru turn spinners, i will keep in mind but i prefer to locate original ones for now and if i couldn't find them by the time my model is completed then i will look into tru turn or another types of spinners.

Hi Learjet builders. Did anyone finish and fly their jet? I have one on the bench that is about 70% done, but wanted to hear how yours fly in case I need to make modifications before continuing! I have an OS 55AX that I am planning on using. Is anyone doing flaps or flaperons? Keep the photos coming!
Terry M.

Hello, welcome to the thread. I have not been working on mine for the last 9 months or more. I started a full scale mahogany boat project which has taken my full attention. www.glen-l.com

Mine is about 85% ready to cover. I also have a OS .55 for mine. It seems to be the ideal engine for this plane. Build straight and balance the airplane properly and you should be just fine.