i like the towels haha. a better way to keep out of trouble with the mrs is to buy a roll of bubble wrap and make a sleeve to slide your wing into. stick the sides with packaging tape and hey presto you have a wing bag. as for the control horns sticking when you take the wing out and put it back in get some styro blocks and press them onto the control horns so it dosnt catch. but yeah its looking great with the red on the lower half and i agree its easy to spot when a couple of hundred feet up and the white says its the right way up dont worry haha takes allot off ya mind dosnt it and no seconds spending trying to figure which way up it is. good work

bubble wrap - hadn't thought of that. I will give it a try - I am starting to accumulate a lot of planes and need a better way of keeping the wings protected. One of my problems is my 13 year old and his mates hang out in my man-cave when my wife starts yelling at them for wrestling in the house and who knows what they are capable of damaging. Bored 13 year old boys are pretty much a recipe for disaster. I also have a couple of 18 year old cousins visiting from England who are adding to the chaos in my house - although they have mainly been sitting by the pool trying to get a tan.

hahaha yeah us english do try to get tans here but ya know its always rubbish weather here so there making the best of it and i dont blame them haha. yeah man-cave im just creating mine now. a bedroom has become empty today as my ex took her stuff and iv never been so eager to paint a room. its all white well half white till iv finished the painting. bubble wrap is a cheap and efective way as i found out.

Yup, when I moved from steamboat springs to Ojai, cali, I wrapped every plane and wing in bubble-wrap and packed them in the bed of my s-15 I had, not a single dent or scuff on the trip, and if sealed with packing tape, it's weather tight, so rain didn't bother it, but in CA, it rains 1 time a year for about 10 minutes, the rest of the time, it was 80 degrees and sunny with a nice san anna wind from the southwest. I'm still trying to figure out why I left southern cali, people were nice, flying almost year round, hot girls, great night life, and I traded it all for frigid winters, and cold people in the NE, I must be stupid. But I remember I left because my brother was getting on my nerves and I had enough, so I went back home to CT for a refresher and break from him.

In the latest Fly RC that I was reading yesterday there was an article on making cheap but strong wing bags from Reflectix which is insulation made from bubble wrap with silver material on both sides. You can get it a home-cheapo, here's a link:

http: //www.homedepot.com/webapp/wcs/stores/servlet/ProductDisplay?storeId=10051&productId=100020855&l angId=-1&catalogId=10053&ci_sku=100020855&ci_src=14110944 &cm_mmc=shopping-_-google-_-D22X-_-100020855&locStoreNum=6675&marketID=29

Any progress? I am almost done with the covering. Just have some trim color to add to the bottom of the wing. The wing was surprisingly easy to cover and is by far my best covering result yet. I am about to set off to Lake Tahoe to go camping for the rest of the week. I will post some pictures when I come back - I am happy with the results to this point; hopefully it will look good when it all goes together.

I would like to be able to get some cool decals, like the "Goodrich" insignia that was on the first color scheme I saw, or some other sponsor type decal. I looked on Tower and didn't see anything. Do you know of anywhere you can get decals?

Most vynal cutters can do it but there are a few people on RCU that have been mentioned that cut graphics for people. I have basically the leading edge to do and a few trim pieces, but work has been gruelling and long, so this weekend I only had 1 day in the shop to work on it. I hope I can get it finished up maybe in the next few days after work, I really want to fly it soon. I'll see if I can post a few pic's tonight and show my progress. Maybe I should start taking it to work with me and on lunch, keep covering it little by little, then again, I don't think my boss would like that very much?!

Alright, after a hiatas from being on the fourm, I'll post the progress, I've only had a few day here and there, like 3 to work on covering, but so far it's a labor of love. I still have the rest of the front of the wing and the control surfaces to cover, and then, about 200 blue checkers to finish it off. I promised myself I'd finish the trim before the maiden flight, so it's been tough when I spend all day at work making hospitals, universities and co-gen plants working properly in the chilled water department. Tis the season for cooling here in the NE. So I will get the rest of this covered and ready for checkers tonight, maybe right now I'll go outside and spray the wheel pants and the gear, the cowl needs a few more masking lines of checkers and then I can paint the blue, then the yellow. Oh yeah,... the first pic is the mud spray on the skybolt from my field I fly at, keep in mind, this is the upper wing on the outside near the tip, the bottom wing had about a 1/4 of mud on it and oil from landings and touch-n-go's in the sloppy mess at the field.

that looks sweeeeeeeet

nice looking extras I like the idea you went with the 1/32 balsa on all of the tail feathers, i just do the horizontal stab on mine and only the top side. I just finished my fifth one, and if i read right that gp is going to discontinue it! they're nuts. I beleive that the extra 40 is the best flying model i have flown so far and i have built and flown all the gp 40 size aerobats so far.

Again Good jobs to both of you!

Yeah, I sheeted it all in 1/32 contest grade sheets, I had some 6" laying around, so I used it. It made the tail very strong and resist twists, it didn't add much weight at all, since the original was sanded to a airfoil shape and then sheeted.I did do the new aircraft ply LG mounting wood and reinforced the doublers, opend up the rear holes a touch and a few other areas as well. With everything in it and no covering it weighed 5# 14 ozs I think, I scribled it down on the bench for future reference.

yeah i know the 1/32 sheeting that i put on the horizontal on mine really stiffened it up I learned to do that on the 3rd extra 40 after i had the stock setup fail on me (just one side was able to land and repair), now i did have oversized elevators though

I'll have to weigh my new one and get back to you

I used a micro servo for the throttle and two mini servo's for the ailerons and it lightend it up i have the weight difference in my extra 40 build with mods if you are interested

I'm already done setting this one up, just covering it right now, if I did the alerion mods and the tail widening mod I'd have to redo those sections, not really bothered by the stock setup, this is my second extra 40, first one died from old age and oil soaking over the years. Plus,, I've got some bigger fish to fry after this is done and in the air, about 12-14 kits from newer to vintage waiting to be built, plus a few scratch built plans laying around, my enemy is time, but I still build even though I don't have much time available.

but would it be good to enlarge the control surfaces slightly as i may consider that when building my version

We are back from camping, and a very close encounter with a black bear! It was 6ft from our tent, but left happily after eating all our marshmellows.

I am close to done and am setting up the control surfaces. The elevator up and down measurements are different. Why? I am not sure how, or if, I can do this on my Spektrum DS6i. Guess I need to read the manual!

check make sure the elevator servo is nice and aquare in the fus. if its off to one side then you will have more of one throw than the other.

I didn't explain myself. The manual actually calls for more down than up.

Amazing what you find when you read the manual. It looks like the travel adjust feature allows you to set the end point differently for down more than up.

EPA can be your best and worst friend. I usually set the max travel to equal the max deflection possible, then turn the other side down a touch, but in most cases I just make up and down equal on the elevator, the alerions are the same on a low or mid wing. On a high wing, differential is almost a must for axial rolls. Rudder on my planes are as much as you can get, I can always detune it on expo to suit my takeoff sensitivity. I have the plane covered, but no trim checkers on it, nor do I have the rudder, elevators and alerions, between work and the boat, I'm swamped, but hopefully, the next few days I have to work at foxwoods, so I'm about 20 minutes from home, not 1 & 1/2 hrs.

Thanks - that makes sense. I am basically done, except for setting up travel and I ran out of fuel tubing. Also, the darn paint on the cowl is taking a long time to really set up. Once it does I want to give it one coat of clear. I hear you with respect to time - even if I finish the plane it is likely to be three weeks before I can get to the field.

Me too, I at least got home 20 minutes after I left work, but I need to finish the boat for brian so when it turns dark, I'll resume the covering job, but when there is daylight, I'll be working on the boat. But there's nothing stopping me from finishing the painting of the wheel pants and cowl while outside doing the other project. It also seems that people drop off stuff to be gone through or repaired, mike, one of my friends, bought a new trainer off the bay, he finally dropped it off to get a once over, I found all the problems and then he said he's just going to leave it in my hands to get it ready, great,........another project dumped in my lap?! At least I have the skybolt, the eagle II and a few 1/2A planes I can fly and I'm not depending on this to keep me in the air, but it would be nice to have the extra back in the fold to pull out and go flying with.

you still have the quickee to maiden yet.

You be quiet brent, I'm waiting till the grass get's taller to try that sucker out, that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it. Well in any case, I got the boat sprayed in primer white waiting for the final color, then roll the intergrip coating in the inside, along with the bottom paint last. Then attach all the hardware and aluminum rubrail and she's done, maybe another 2 days if I work like I did today. But then again, I have to turn it over to do the bottom paint?! So that may be a slight challange by myself, may have to get creative using the canopy and 2 or 3 chainfalls.

haha ok il keep quiet about the quikee now what about that jungmister. yeah it isnt all that easy lifting and moving big things like that. i remember droping an engine and then having to use 2 trolly jacks to get it back in 1 to lift the gearbox other on the engine get engine higher then the gearbox tilt to the angle of the box and gentl slide it down. i was 16 when i did that and the boke that was suposed to help me swore at me and couldnt belive his eyes. but yeah when ya on ya own ya haveto manage with what ya got even if it means geting creative.

That one too, shhhhhhhh! I need to spray one wing yellow and do the swiss crosses. Does it ever end?