Kevlar - sounds really cool. Where do you get that from? Finishing resin - I haven't worked with any of that. Is is lighter than epoxy?

I have made a little progress - I have most of the top of the wing sheeting done. Just got to put the triangular shape bits on and the cap strips.

The kevlar is , or was sold under K & S engineering, it came on a bobbin, like the kevlar pull/pull setups now a days. The low viscosity resin is sold through almost any marine/ boat store, it takes a lot longer to cure, but you can pick your hardener rate, fast, med, or slow. I use slow for glass layup on finishes, like glassing the sheeting. Fast is used for fuel proofing, medium is used for structural joints, but I still use hobby epoxies too, 6 minute and 30 to 45 minute as well. I got the bottom and top sheeting done, just need to add the trailing edge and do the hinging, then it's put to the side and the fuse gets started. I really haven't had too much time to work on it until today, but I'll be bouncing back and forth between the extra and the skybolt as usual. Get anymore done?

Interesting.  I will definitely have to look into Kevlar - I like playing with high tech materials.  </p>

I am almost done with wing.  Just got to do the airlerons and then sand it.  The wing looks pretty good.  I have definitely overglued but it looks straight and is strong.  </p>

The 3/32 LE sheeting is kinda soft - I worry about it getting cracking or punctured by my clumsy handling.  I was thinking of running some thin CA on the inside to stiffen it up.  I tried this on a piece of scrap and it certainly stiffens the sheet up.    Any advice?</p>

I did the same thing on mine, just ran a zig-zag of thin ca on the inside of the sheeting to stiffen it up. Hind-sight is always 20/20, if I had to do it over again, I would have used heavier balsa sheet from my spare wood supply, but this will be fine, I really don't antisapate rough handling the wing. I'm working on the alerions right now as well, a little more work to do the robart hinge points but worth the effort, I had to make a shim set to help align the drill jig, due to the taper of the trailing edge, nothing tough though. I'll get some pic's of the progress up in a little bit, after the first alerion is done. If I can stay away from the laptop and not be distracted by things, I might have the fuse started today.

O.K., so here's the pic's, basically the center sheeting going down and the cap strips, trailing edges are then epoxied in place, make sure you double check from side to side to find exact center, don't rely on the center of the sheeting on the trailing edge, being off 1/16" isn't too bad but I staggered the top and bottom trailing edge sheeting, to not have a main center joint. Doesn't really make sense to me why I do it, but I was taught if possible, offset each side so the top and bottom joints aren't in line. It supposidly makes the wing center joint stronger. Anywho, I drilled the alerion hinge holes evenly down the TE and on the alerion to match, mounted it up, pressed it tight and sanded bolth to bee seamless. Next, remove the alerion and round the LE and fit it up to the wing, I have to releive it some more, just enough to account for the covering, maybe a 32nd of an inch. But that way, when I go to glue the alerions on, the inner section will be flush with the alerions themselves. The only thing left to do is cap the end ribs and alerion with 3/32 or 1/8 balsa, I'm capping the alerions inboard and out because it adds to the durability of the edges on them. In the last pic, you'll see the kevlar thread running straight up the last rib and connecting the two spars, this runs all the way across the lower sparand up the other side. Well, back to work.

Iam almost done with the wing. Need to fill a little and sand.Your tip about sanding the aileron while mounted makes sense - I am off maybe 1/32 by the aileron linkage.
Ialso managed to come out with one airleron 3/32nd inch longer than the other. I cut off the 1 inch per the instructions and glued it to end of the TE, but guess i mis-measured on side. I could fix it, or leave it. It is not noticeable to the eye.

I don't quite understand what you staggered. My staggering generally occurs when Ileave the bar!

I did add extra sheeting to overlap behind the joints in the various pieces of center sheeting and put some additional 1 inch wide pieces of 3/32 on the back of the center sheeting to stiffen it up. Also put some triangular stock on where the top sheeting meets R1. Ifigure this will all add a little strength and rigidity into the center of the wing.

Your airleron fits incredibly well - amazing work. Ican see why you use those hinges. I have used the CAhinges but may try robart next time around.

Did you epoxy the cap strips on?I used tite bond. Should Igo back and add some epoxy to strenghten? The whole wing seems very strong at this point. I am starting to see that you come out with a stronger plane when you kit build versus an ARF.

I still have the fuse put together (tape and rubber bands) from when Ifirst starting looking at the kit. I am thinking that Iwill be using titebond where it says to use thin/medium CA. Ihave a syringe that Iused when Iwas messing with wood glue last year - Ifigure Ican use that to get the glue in pretty accurately from the inside.

The wing is very cool to look at. Not as pretty as yours, due to my overgluing, but still cool. Icould see building the second kit Ihave and just hanging it, uncovered, in the house somewhere. Iam sure my wife would love it!

I am starting to think about covering.  I know you have issues with monocote/ultracote but I figure that I am going with one or the other.  I had trouble with monocote - metallic silver and metallic green.  Had trouble getting them to stick and then getting so hot that they bonded differently in certain areas leading to different coloring.  People have told me that some colors are easier to work with than others.</p>

I am also concerned with what color to paint the cowl to match with the covering.  I don't have an airgun or anything like that and really don't want to get into that.  Do you know of any spray can colors that match well?    I am definitely not looking for perfection - just a decent job.</p>

You can search around at most hobby and home supply stores and find a rattle can that will match the color of the covering. After you spray it, you can put a clear of topflite lustercoat clear on it or nelsons hobby clear, which is water based. Some kryon paints, the laquer variety will be more fuel resistant. But if your good with filling and tuning your engine, raw fuel will barely reach the painted surface. Mainly it's just castor oil all over it by the end of the day. I guess I', going onto the fuse tonight maybe, I was working on the skybolt and had a good head of steam working on putting it together and I went to put in the cabanes and ,........yeah, they were missing from the kit, so it got put on hold real fast. I spent 3 hours digging around to see if dropped them in a crack somewhere. So I hear you like exotic materials? The fuse has 2 areas that need a reinforcement, you can use aircraft ply or,...carbonfiber, glass cloth or kevlar to reinforce the side doublers. The landing gear plate area needs real aircraft ply and tristock or just glass reinforcement around the internal structure. But all the weight added can be removed by opening up a few holes in the fuse sides and bottoms.

Thanks for the pointers regarding paint.</p>

I have various sizes of aircraft ply and glass cloth, but the idea of kevlar just sounds cool.  Where do you get it from?</p>

I have the fuse taped together but am not going to start gluing until after you get ahead of me.  Every time I look at your pictures I see something that makes more sense than the instructions.  No rush - i have to finish sanding the wing, stab, fin etc which will take me a while.  Also need to dial in the surface travel on my Hangar 9 Aresti - I had the friend I bought it from show me how to start the YS63S - my first four stroke - man it has some torque.  I may maiden it this weekend.  However, I was finally having fun flying my Pulse 25e now that I put a 13x8 prop on it - it has a lot more punch.  Also I am trying to learn how to fly the 25 size ME109 pylon racer around the pylon course.  Only flown that plane 5 times.  Too many planes, too little time!</p>

Tell me about it, I called GP and they are sending the cabanes for the skybolt but just this one time, in the future, they qouted, if it is missing something other than what they listed is not in the kit, under scratch and dent, it's not going to be covered. But at least I got them to send out the cabanes. It also looks like the Balsa USA smoothie will get put on my other building board and started as well, I have another group build to do, I think it will be 3 of us doing it. That's another oldschool design that flies great but man, not for the faint hearted in the speed department. Sure, the smoothie looks innocent, but it's a rocket, doesn't really lose speed on final either. Well, I just arrived at my brothers house to give him his early B-day present so he can work on his street bike, I got him a 300 pcs craftsman tool kit, but it looks like I'll be rebuilding his carbs again on the bike. He left the gas from last year in it and it varnished the needleseats on the floats, so now his crankcase is filled with a 75/25 mix of gas and oil, the 75 being gas, so much that it's coming out the case vent.[]

Ok, so let's get rolling, first start with the firewall parts. I chose to use an 1/8" dowel to key them together, helps in the alignment department. Line all the parts up, and bore the 2 holes on the outter marks for centerline of the engine's crank, Then test fit and prep for epoxy lamination. I used a piece of scrap MDF and put some monocote clear backing on it to help keep the firewall from sticking. Just epoxy the inner surfaces and slip each one over the pegs and clamp it down, wipe off the excess and let it sit for about an hour. In the meantime, setup the fuse sides, this is where one of the 2 mods comes into play, I chose to do doubler reinforcement along with a strip of carbon-fiber and kevlar. You only need to do one of them, either glas it, wood, or carbonfiber/kevlar, I did two of them, and yes, you will have to modify the former. But this is really not that big a deal to do, takes more time to line it up with epoxy and weight it down than to make the reinforcement to the sides. So I used MAS epoxy and medium hardener, so this is the extent for the night, tomorrow, it will get framed up and start looking more like a fuslage than a bunch of planks. In one of the pic's, I show a easy way to ensure alignment, just make sure a scrap piece of liteply is flush along the former notch in the front of the wing notch. This will allow you to have the doublers in the same depth and location on bolth sides. Hope these pic's helped.

It also looks like I have another compairison to build, a GP cap 21B model, 40 sized, from early 90's, so once this is done and the skybolt, the cap and smoothie are on the boards.

good to see the fus has been started, is it your own idea to drill and fit dowels to act as a guide for gluing the 3 sections together, if so it is a great idea and somthing that wouldnt have occourd to me. but yeah wont be all that long before the little beast is flying haha keep up the good work. good to see you using ur diving lead weights they aint as light as they look are they mate.

I  was standing there with the 2x4's stacked up and it dawned on me, I have something like 200 lbs of diving weights. It was either that or one of the diving tanks to slap on it. The dowels is my own little thing I do, years ago I tried it on my topflite p-47, worked like a champ. So it takes 1 minute to do, but cuts the fiddling factor down to nothing, you can squeeze the parts as tight as possible and they won't shift out of alignment. I would normally use regular wood glue to bond the doublers, but the addition of carbon fiber and kevlar requires epoxy resin, but this is the low viscosity MAS resin, so weight is not all that bad, infact, it's very hard to make a little fillet using it, it just seems to flow out like paint. The other problem I noticed but can't do much about it till later is the fuslage sides are made from lite-ply, the ply has some voids in them, where the inner layer is missing, but that would just be a quality control issue. I will mix up some micro ballon/ resin paste and inject it into the voids here and there.

I like the dowel trick.  I had already glued up the firewall a month ago before we started this thread.  I fiddled around a lot.  Next time I will use the dowel. </p>

 I chose to use a combination of glass tape sandwiched between a 1/8 doubler with 30 minute epoxy.  It will certainly add some weight but strength is important to me.  I should have some time to work on it this weekend so I wanted to get the doubler done tonight.</p>

 I looked at the Balsa USA smoothie - I love that style of plane with the wayback canopy and racer looks.  Are they are fun plane to fly?  Easy to build?  I will certainly put in on the list.</p>

It is definatly a smooth flying plane, but very fast, don't let those sport flying looks fool you, the first one I owned, had a st 40 ring in it and all I can  say is balistic, not a pure speed plane, but very efficent airfoil. Fun till I got in a low bank and the wind was high with gusts, the rest is history, it got slammed into the ground at half throttle due to the wing being about 45 degrees to the wind gust. I swore I'd build another but they discontinued it, until now, it's a re-release. As far as the extra goes, I did get the fuse body mostly framed up and sitting on my bench, but had to stop early and get diner done and go to bed. But tonight I'll probibaly get the rest of the bulk done on it, right now I'm on lunch break and down at the hobby shop, trying to get stuff for the skybolt and a few odds and ends I need for the projects. Kinda helps when your job for the day is 4 miles from the hobby shop and 1/2 mile from the company supply center. Be back on tonight with the pictures.</p>

Alright, so I had a nice 4 hour journey home the 120 miles I had to go, interstate 95 north was shut down due to an accident and the holiday traffic of mindless morrons driving north to CT,RI,Mass and Maine. Lot's of fun, atleast I didn't get rearended or T-boned like the previous van did. So here I am, if I try real hard, I could have it flying by monday, but,......I'm covering this in koverall and dope, I picked up the much needed nitrate for the koverall. So right now I still sit at one plane ready to fly out of 8 on the rack and 10 in boxes on the floor, but by next weekend, this will be airborn, and so will yours, if you cover it with mono or ultracote. Nothing wrong with the covering, but I don't like the plastic covering for many reasons, the main one is durability. So I forgot to take pic's of the assembly of the fuslage, but,....since you've already done that, I don't need to explain. The mods I did to the gear plate are a little extreme, if you just build it as planned and glass the structure, then your fine. I cut new parts out of 1/8" birtch aircraft ply, glassed the inside and epoxied this into place. Don't let the pictures fool you, the fire wall and tank support are in the fuse for location purposes only, those will be glued and glassed in later. I left the bottom rear plate off on purpose, I put a 1/4" stick in the rear to help keep the sides even while the glue dried. The point is to keep the bottom exposed to do the pushrods and make sure all joints are tight and secure. I did epoxy the horizontal stab in place, just be stingy with the epoxy, any extra weight out there and you'll be adding lead to the nose, 1 ounce of extra weight in the back requires 3-4 ounces in the nose to ballance. If you want to keep the former F-3 from being damaged or shifted, support it on a small can like in the pictures. But when I glued the box together, I had it upright, not up sidedown, with 25 lbs of diving weight on it to keep it flush and square on the plans. Where you at in the build?

Great pictures.  I am right behind you in the build.  I am thinking of doing the same with the landing gear plate - I have 1/8 birch ply - however I don't have a band saw so it is more manually intense.  I have had a couple of beers tonight and previous experience has shown me that I shouldn't do any major gluing at this point.  Maybe I will just cut out the landing gear plate and glass it together.

beer,........I spent the moning/afternoon epoxy glassing the boat for brian, and running the outboard just to split the lower unit so we could get the old impellor out. But now I unloaded my jeep so I can go to my buddy tom's house and maybe ride the quads. But first I'll might do a little more work on the extra before I leave.

I have been making slow, but steady progress today, in between honey-dues around the house.  I am getting close to where your last pics were.  The 1/8 gear plate mod that I cut and glassed together is not quire as pretty as yours but is very strong.  I don't see it breaking on hard landings - instead the shock will be sent through the entire plane and will break something else   </p>

</p>

I just epoxied the firewall into place per the instructions.  Doesn't seem stong enough to me.  Then I look at your post from a couple of days ago and I see that you say you are going to glass the firewall in.  I was going to epoxy former 1D into place but I am going to wait to see what you do first.  That is assuming you get done playing with boats and zooming around on quads - tough life!</p>

Yeah, it's rough, but someone has to do it?!I did epoxy the firewall in and added 3/8 tri-stock to the backside, along with the tank floor and the 1D former, pretty stout and stiff. I'm trying to tell myself through the build to keep it light, otherwise, I'll end up with a tank, that'll fly like one as well. So the heavy reinforcements are for a reason, but the rest of the plane is good. From now on, it's pretty much by the book. The changes to design and material are over.Here's some pic's, in # 3 it looks like the firewall is crooked, it is, the firewall is angled to the fuse, causing the tapered firewall,I did a double take and realized that it was going to look that way no matter what. So don't be parinoid that you screwed up, it's suppose to be like that believe it or not.

Well, here's my progress report, wing is mounted, and the belly pan is done, I had to stop to go to a friends for a pre memorial day party but I got quite a bit done for only 3 or 4 hours of work on it. Heres the pic's,....

Alright, so it's report time, a few small things were changed or added to aid in building and durability, so here we go, I added a piece of balsa to the bottom under the belly pan plate, the one I had was curved from the factory and needed support, plus it's a long gap between the reinforcement and the front so it all leveled out by adding this small piece of scrap balsa. I also cut a new forward fuse bottom out of birtch ply to replace the lite ply, predrill the holes using the old part as a template, just clamp them together and drill through the two with a 1/8" drill bit. Glue this in place and make sure the gap on the wing is good and even, after the epoxy cures, sand it all flush and your ready to add the side balsa sheeting. I also added a small section of servo wire tube to the bolt for the wing, it gives it a finished look and keeps the bolt from falling inbetween the wing and the belly pan section, Hope these pic's help. Any questions so far?</p>

Great pics.  I have gotten side tracked since I stalled my ME109 after take off yesterday and had a crash landing that pushed the landing gear up through the wing.  I cut the top sheeting off and fixed the rib and bottom sheeting with liberal amount of titebond II.  I would have used epoxy or CA but now am seeing that titebond is equally strong and lighter.  I then had to cut some 1/16 sheeting and get it to fit etc.  The end result was pretty good - strong, and not real noticeable.  So not too much progress on the Extra -  The landing gear plate and 1D are epoxied in and everything looks good.  I have no doubt your pictures will be very helpful since I have not built a belly pan plate before.</p>