When building the belly pan, it definatly helps to lock the wing down tight with the wing bolt, don't forget to keep the shims in the front area, the main reason for the shim is for clearence for the covering. You just need a slight gap, mine is about 1/64", that will be adiquit for most covering to fit between the joint, as toy build the belly pan, keep the side formers nice and tight, adjust the curve to match the wing the best you can. fit up bolth internal doubler supports so they are flush with the sides and lock the former in place. Go ahead and glue those in place and try not to glue the sides to the fuse as your doing it. A small piece of wax paper between the front and rear, doubled over helps to keep it from sticking and gives you the clearence you'll need. Lay in the bottom pan and line it up, adjust the front and rear till it makes a nice even gap front and rear and glue it in place. When it's all dry take a ruler and lay it on top, see how straight the surface is, if it's bowed, add the small balsa former and sand it to match the oter formers angles. Add the front bottom plate and line it up and adjust for a good fit and epoxy that in place. I've been mixing up a epoxy microballon paste and using that as a filler where the lite-ply intersects at angles and there is a void to fill. I still have one void to do, it's the one near the back of the belly pan on the top and under side, plus, where it meets the wing itself on the former. The tube will get bonded to the belly pan as well and sealed. I didn't get much further than that last night, decided to spend some time with the misses, gotta keep her happy so I can spend time on my toys. So far, I'm happy with the plane, my only gripe is the cheap lite ply, when I was setting up the firewall, I went to smack one side in place with my hand and I managed to crack the top plate and a little of the front right fuse side. I looked at it and found a large void inside the lite-ply where it had no inner wood. But it was alright, I know that the sum of the parts make it whole and stronger than it will ever need to be. I did decide too stop and pick it up off the craddle just to see how heavy it is, I didn't actually put it on a scale, but it's still pretty light for being mostly ply. My only other concern is that once this plane is done, I'll cease building for the rest of the season due to me having too much fun flying it, this will make the ME109 feel like a flying brick, and that's sad, because I love the ME109's, but I perfer the butcher bird much more. I bought a set of valiey aviation plans for the FW190 back at the RAM show, at some point I'm going to start cutting it or order a laser cut kit for it so it will end up in the fleet.</p>

So, you get anymore done, or is the wife putting you under plane arrest? I wanted to work on it last night but a friend stopped by and wanted to shoot the turd about planes, I made him buy a better trainer with a radio system on the bay and hopefully I can train him to fly much better than with his zillion times over repaired nexstar pile of dukie. I got my cabanes for the skybolt so I might finish that project off a bit but jump back and forth between the two. I stopped at the hobby shop and saw the owner, an old friend, he's building a 95" ME109 and so is his friend, we went over the planes and picked out little things that were needed, but all in all, he's doing a fantastic job. I sat there and BS'd and what the two of us bolth came up with was the fact that were all pretty happy being modelers lately, what I mean by that is time is tight, but the spare time is better spent building than grabbing that shiny arf and zipping to the field for a handfull of flights. I guess were just saving up the field time for one good long day at the field with some good old fashion kit and scratch built planes.

Haven't gotten much done.  Glued 1D and the gear plates in place.  Glued the servo tubes and sanded down the epoxy nice and flat. I started looking at the parts for fitting the wing to the fuse but I need a block of hour or two to get this done, which I wont likely have until the weekend.  </p>

Picked up some Ultracoat dark red covering and spray paint from my LHS.    </p>

I hear ya, it's funny, evertime I say to one of my friends "sure come on over",.......nothing gets done!!!!![:@] I just locked down the cabanes on the skybolt, checked the incidence and now I'm moving onto the motor and tank install. I also bought a on board glow driver for the first few flights, it might stay with the plane but well see how the RCV runs with it and without it on, I switch it on and off from the tx to see the point of installing it and adding weight. But soon the extra will be on the bench getting lower side sheeting and the rest of the top sections too. Well we'll see how far I get on the two tonight.

wow lots of progress since i last checked in. looking great as always. i miss flying and we have great weather too at the minute its absolute roasting. wish i could get on here alittle more often haha il get back on here in 2 weeks time and hel be flying it no doubt wont ya ray

I don't see why not, in 2 weeks, alot can be done, I almost have this skybolt finished, I just took a moment to run-in the RVC, man, that thing is a stump puller. At 6000 RPM per the books, and running rich, it's pulling one of my endless rigging loops tight, it's not dragging the vans receiver hitch anywhere, but still it's got some pull with a JZ 14x6. Well, gotta go to my bro's party, after I run another 15 minutes of glow through the skybolt.

Any progress?I got the wing mounted over the weekend - that was a bit of a pain, but it looks pretty good. Ihad never built anything like the bellypan before and had to go slowly. Your tips and pics helped. Ihave got the chines mostly done and am about to put the sheeting on the front upper deck, or whatever it is called.

I have also starting cutting out the cowl. Any tips on how to deal with cowl, or is it just cut, sand, thin CA, epoxy, fill, sand, paint?

I had a successful flying session on Sunday - nothing broke and planes flew well so I am more enthusiastic to get this plane in the air.

What do you use for fuel proofing?

I wish I got some progress done, but that will change tonight, I've been wrapped up in work, can't seem to get a free minute, between that and getting the skybolt out of the way, I just look over at the extra, with the wing mounted and say damit!!! I want that done and flying soon. I'll work on it tonight to get the turtledeck and front nacele done. I use finishing epoxy to fuelproof, or dope if I desire a color, like cessna grey or black. It dries fast and is fuelproof, plus, it soaks into the wood and can be sanded down and repainted in the future.

I have the horiz stab epoxied on and have cut, glued, and started to fill the cowl and wheel pants.  Bondo works great for filling. 

Going flying today so I wont make any progress today.  Maybe tomorrow.

Some of the GP kits mentioned in this thread may be discontinued but Tower let me add 9 of each to the shopping cart on June 6, 2009 and it showed they are in stock ready to ship.
40 size Extra http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXJ579&P=0
60 size Extra http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...?&I=LXJ580&P=0
40 size Cap http://www3.towerhobbies.com/cgi-bin...&I=LXJ578&P=SM

I noticed they still have stock.  I emailed both GP and Tower and recieved emails back saying the Extra was being discontinued.  Not sure about the CAP.  Anyway, I bought two .40 size and two .60 size Extras and ended buying an SSE as well, so I have more than enough kits to keep me busy.</p>

I think you did well. Unfortunately there's no way to know when a kit will be discontinued, so, it is a good idea to buy them when you can.

My brother has spares for three of his favorite kits. SIG Astro Hog and Hog Bipe, and GP Super Sportster 60.

Well then, I guess I better get a few spares, I really don't know why GP makes a great kit and then discontinues it because they made some crap arf version. Builders like good flying planes, the fact that it looks pretty realistic too is a boot, them discontinuing it is a sign that GP has no sense what people want........
 On the other side of being negative, I didn't get much built today, went to maiden my skybolt instead, flew awsome but I had an issue with the RCV engine, after taking the cowl off twice inbetween 3 flights I figured out that the low speed needle was walking in and causeing a lean run, I would set it to 2 1/2 turns out, and after one flight, it would be at 1/2 turn out due to walking in. I need to find a tighter O-ring or I need to loctite the idle needle in place. Other than that, the only other option is to buy a equilent OS carb and fit it to the RCV.

You are right that the GP kits are good quality. 

I have finish the turtle deck and am now starting to fit the engine, which leads to a question.  How do you set up your fueling line?  This is only my third gas plane.   On the first I could get to the fuel line between the carb and tank so I would just pull that off.  On my ME109 I have a third line into the tank;  what I don't like about this is fuel comes out from the carb when I fuel and I have to hold the plane nose down to suck fuel out.  Looking for advice.  I have OS 46AX and a Great Planes tank

I use the great planes ez fuelers, it's inline and I almost never had a problem with them, just put a small 1/4 hole in the cowl and mount it just below the surfaceof the cowl,on the firewall. It shuts off the fuel flow to the carb when fueling and uses the feed for filling and draining, no two clunk systems or possible lines to get damaged and leak fuel everywhere. I use those almost exclusively on all my cowled planes. The skybolt has a 3 line system, and it's getting changed to the ez fueler, I hate having to pull the fueling plug and hope I don't lose it in the grass, plus it's located below the tank so it siphons out fuel when you pull the probe. I'm working on the extra tonight, gotta makeup for yesterdays frivilious flying at the field.

Icontinue to make slow but steadyprogress! The servos and switch are installed. Engine mount is ready to go. The slimline muffler I bought had poorly finished4-40 threads for the two machine screws so I had to invest in a tap. I seem to have bought a lot of little tools along the way with this build - I am sure they are essential and will be invaluable in the future. I guess it just means I will have to keep building kits.

Wow, you've moved along very well, I'm right behind you, I got a chance to work on it last night.I managed to get the chine sheeting finished and blended to the sides and bottom, also got the front upper formers and stringers installed. Tonight I'm going to work on the back half and the cowls/ wheel pants. I figure while the tail pieces setup and cure I'll get the plastic parts done along with tinting the canopy. But we'll see how long I have to be at work for, absorbtion chillers are finiky you know, kinda like thinking outside the box of what's going on inside the box that you can see but only read tempatures and salt concentrations. If I got into it at any depth, it would take me about a week to get the concept and operation down solid with many people. But back to work and I'll post some pic's of my progress as well. Funny though, I'm still bouncing back and forth with the covering bit, koverall and dope or monocote, can't decide wich to do at this point but I need to figure that point out, also thinking of going pull pull on the rudder and using two seperate pushrods for the elevators, we'll see.

How do you tint the canopy?

From my standpoint I hope you go with monocote so that I can see how you do it.

I was thinking about pull-pull and dual push rods for the elevators but don't know how to do it - so I just went with the stock approach.  If you go the other way please post some photos.

I might just go with monocote because it's easy to do and easy to get a good looking finish when done. I usually tell myself if I'm comtimplating weather or not to add something that makes it better, just do it. I'll let you know tonight weather or not the pull-pull is going in place. At first I was going to do a dual elevator servo setup, but vito'd that due to extra weight and it would be over kill.

Well, work sucks, I woke up and decided that I needed a break, I've been going for over 1/2 a year and only taken 1 day off in that time, so,.....I called in and told then I think today is my weekend start. So I can do an update on the progress, I had little time to build, never mind taking pictures, so here's where I sit, today the stabs and the turtle deck will be done along with a pull-pull setup on the tail. But first things first, I did the robart hinging on the elevators and the rudder, samded them to an airfoil section on purpose, making them very thin, now I reached back and dug out the 1/32" contest grade balsa sheeting in the 6" wide variety and sheeted the vertical stab making it only slightly heavier but 5X stronger. You don't need to do this if you just sand the vertical and horizontal stabs per the plans, they're plenty strong as designed, but to get it more streamlined, you'll lose too much material to keep it strong, so sheeting is required. So far, I'm pleased with the results, I wanted to do this on the last one, but never did and if memory serves me correct, my old extra needed tail weight, so the .5 OZ added in sheeting isn't going to hurt anything, it might come out to 1 ounce total but I'll remove some of the bottom lite-ply to make up for the weight gain in the tail section. I do have to run next-door to the hobby shop, about 1 mile from my house and get another 2-56 pull-pull setup, can't find mine in the mess! So that is in order after doing the horizontal stab sheeting, clean my shop and again, try to keep it clean?![img]/forum/js/punymce/plugins/emoticons/img/trans.gif[/img]

I too have quite a mess in my small workshop, or "man room" as it is referred to in my household!  It is only 7 by 10, so I have to keep it pretty tidy to get anything done, but a mess seems to occur anytime I spend more than 30 minutes in there.

I was working on fitting the cowl last night and ran into an issue that I am trying to figure out the best way around.  The needle valve adjustment (small thumb screw thingy) does not stick out enough to actually come through the cowl.  If I make a hole to reach it, it will be maybe 1/4 inch inside the cowl.  Therefore I can't use my fingers to adjust the fuel/air mixture.  The only solution I have thought of is to use my dremel to cut a notch in the top of the adjuster so that i can use a screw driver to adjust it.  Any other ideas??

What engine are you using? Look to see if it has the hole provided for a wire extension, it'll have a setscrew on the side of it to lock the wire extension into the needle. It should look like this, here's the skybolt with a small wire extension and a small 90 degree bend in the end to help turn it, and indicate it's position.

Here you go, now you can see that I'l moving along pretty well, when I have the time, like I said, work sucks. I'll get these mounted and move onto the ABS while the epoxy dries and go pick up the pull/pull system around the corner, I might actually get to final sanding today and servo &amp; motor setup as well.

duh!!  Yeah, my OS 46AX has that.  I wondered what that allen screw was for!  thanks

No problem, I figured that there are only a handfull of engines that have no provisions for it, but those are supertigre and some of the older 2 strokes like fox, webra and perry carbs. So I just came back from H&amp;H hobby, I got a few different pull/pull systems, I think I'll go with the kevlar coated system by sullivan, it came in a 30' spool, picked up another remote fueler and switch mount system, a slightly larger fuel tank, 10 ozs instead of 8 ozs, and some bolt on axles by goldberg with sig wheelpant mounts. Well, back to building I guess. I'll show the simple pull/pull system.