Well, after 272 pictures taken, only a handfull made it to the final cut, so without saying too much more, here's the progress,.....I got the pull-pull tubes installed and went on to the horizontal and vertical stab mounting. I must admit, I bought a robart incedence meter years ago, it's been invaulable in many projects, it's the primary tool in setting up stabs and wings. So that part is done along with the turtledeck stringers and the sheeting, added the top block and wiped away the excess glue. I'll let this sit till tomorrow, then I'll shape the top block and continue on motor and servo install if brian doesn't show up to work on the little boat, but we'll see what happens. I got alot done today and moved along to where you are almost, funny how one day and I'm back up to snuff with you. The old saying of "do one thing a day" really keeps you moving, I had to spend the whole day trying to play catch up, but at least I'm close if not tomorrow I'll regain the reigns and push to covering this little gem.

And some more,.....

Great pictures!  I flew my Pulse yesterday in high wind and had a couple of very poor landings, one of which I later found cracked the trailing edge where it meets the sheeting at the wing root.  On another landing I came up 3 ft short of the runway in the grass which ripped the landing gear off - the plane continued onto the runway on its belly - kinda cool looking!  So I will be spending time fixing today to be able to fly tomorrow.  I have cut off some of the ultracoat from bottom side of the wing and found the one of the ribs is also cracked - it is made of very soft, flexible balsa.  I guess I am now seeing the poorer quality side of ARFs.  Altogether I have been disappointed with the finish qualify of the Pulse.  Now I am seeing that it is not very durable/robust.

Anyway,   I will probably wait for you to get ahead of me and see how you tackle the covering. 

I don't have an incident meter and just glued the stab on and eyeballed it.  I did have to fiddle around a fair bit to get the fin at 90 degrees.  But it all looks square when I look at it from behind and in front.  I will definitely pick up one of those meters for the next build.

I may also fix my old scratch built so that I can fly at the local park - I have been missing being able to fly in the summer evenings.

Those are the best times to fly, I show up at around 4-5 pm and fly till the sun goes down, it's a little cooler and the suns not beating you down so bad. I got the turtle deck shaped and sanded, I just added a small fillet of hobby lite balsa filler around the base of the vertical stab to blend it in. Other than that I have a smidge to go and I'll be past you by today and finalizing control layout soon. I'll upload the pic's to my laptop (the balsa encrusted thing on the bench) and I'll post the update, there's a little trick in there for protecting vertical stabs while sanding, masking tape is good, but doesnt protect from impacts with the sanding bar. I show you the stupid little thing to do to help avoid fixing stuff that's dinged or nicked because of carelessness.

I know what you mean about the pulse, but the only complaint I have about H-9 planes is the gear mounts are pretty weak, but my pulse is sitting there waiting to be rebuilt or given away to someone who wants to try and rebuild it. I've been toying with the idea of cutting some foamcore wings in a symetrical airfoil to put in it. Of course, clipping my right wing off on a soccer goalpost wasn't too smart. I only fly at flying fields after that happened. If I don't do the foamcore wings, I might try to adapt a set of sportster wings to it, they're cheap enough, around 45 bucks, the pulse wings are 120 for the set?! Not worth buying.

Ok, so here's the update, the side rails are done, the tank hatch is in place, it's been rough sanded and smoothed with 220 grit (next is 320) and now I need to flip it and put it in the stand to do the linkages, and pull pull, mount the motor with pitts muffler and set up the switch and fueler system, the tank is already installed as well. I did change it out for a 10 ounce so working on it is no problem in the future, unlike some planes like the sportster and hog bipe, where it's almost a perminent install.I do need to epoxy microballon the pull/pull guide tubes in place, these are just the reminant guide tubes from the elevator guide tubes. I do have new red sullivan tubing, but I'll try to use up as much of the material if possible and not waste the old tubing. I do plan on installing an antenna outlet to the tail section, you might want to do this for you extra kit. It's simple and easy enough to do now, rather than later. Oh yeah, the stupid little tip is the piece of flashing tin bent around the leading edge of the rudder, if you hit the tin, you won't knick the leading edge, it worked like a charm, and the best part is, you can cut it with siscors(splg?).


Why isn't there a spell check in the task bar, I really could use that on a daily basis.

Nice trick with the thin metal sheet around the fin.  I will remember that for next time. 
I have the Pulse fixed.  My ultra coat patching is pretty crappy but doesn't look too bad from a distance.

I got cowl blocks on and sanded and cut the hole for the muffler.  Need to put the tank in, airleron linkages, then tail wheel.

What type of tail wheel assembly are you going to use?

Sorry about that, I went to go run a few engines to determine which one to put in the extra. Then I had to go grocery shopping and do dinner, so late last night was a wash. I ran the fox .40, and the webra 50, I also have the NIB supertiger 40 ring, but after running the webra I decided that's going in the extra. I had a heavy 3 blade 10x6 on it and it was still turning 15,000 Rpm. Idle was great as well. The lower profile head will keep it inside the cowl as well. So I'll set that up on the engine mount today. As far as the tailwheel goes, I already made a provision for the GP semi-scale tailwheel assembly, it's for 40-60 size planes. I got the servo layout set, but need to finalize the connections and install the control horns. Basically set the whole plane up and tear it back down so I can cover it. I don't know how much I can get done today, my GF wants to have a "Date Night",........at this point, I'd rather build my plane than get lucky. I guess I'm missing a few screws in my head if I'm thinking that way but it's true. I'll post a few more pic's today as I go.

All right, so elevator and rudder/tailwheel are done, here's how to add pull/pull, if you were building it in, you'd offset the elevator tubes to the opposite side of the throttle input, but since I built it per plans and changed my mind, I had to set the rudder servo behind and below the elevator and throttle servo tray. The pull/pull is the sullivan kevlar strand type, the servos are for setup, only, I plan on replacing them with the hitec 475's coming sometime this week. Throttle will be a standard type 422 hitec or so. The trick to pull/pull is setup one side and match the other cable as best you can, don't worry about putting a ton of tension on the cables. I've seen guy's set these up with soo much tensionyou could tune a panio with them, unfortunatly, it just invites failure, especially in the turnaround in the threaded adapter. Remove enough slack to take away the play, but no more, remember, when the plane goes from the cool house workshop to the field, the airframe is going to grow as it gets warmer and more humid at the field. Plus, you'll only wear out the bearings in the servo by doing that as well. I simply cut a small piece of brass tubing, about 1 size smaller thanbrass tubing provided in tank systems, CA the strands tight, trim it flush, slip a brass tube on, the 2-56 end piece by dubro (PN-201), loop it through the brass tube and then do another loop back through the tube for security. Add a drop of ca in the tube and let it sit for a few seconds to soak in, now crimp it with a pair of electrical crimpers, I use a pair that are designed for ear tabed type terminals, the kind you find on servo ends and push pin connectors. There, your done, you can also add heat shrink over the brass and loop and make it look more "finished", and add a drop of CA inside to lock it all together, but the CA will cause a hard point and fail eventually down the road on the kevlar, but for stranded steel cable it won't. So it's still feasible for you to do pull/pull, it's all about 1 1/2 hour's worth of work from tubes installed to setting it all up. It takes almost no enery away from the servo and is very persice in movement, you can actually see each step in trim on the servo. I mounted the tailwheel, I installed a blindnut on a plate for the front screw, the rear is just a tapered head wood screw, that one see's almost no load, just the front screw. I also shortened the aluminum dome nut and threaded shaft, I ran into the same issue on my skybolt where the aluminum nut was hitting the rudder fin from initial sag of the bracket. The elevator linkage was going to be bound with copper strand and soldered but I decided to use the wheel collars for the fact that in the future I can remove the push-rods to not only cover the plane but do repairs on the system, it does have drag of the rods but no more than a ounce or two, basically the bow of the rods in the sleeves. The servo doesn't even notice the slight drag. Now I have to setup the engine, and bore the hole for the throttle linkage and set the throttle up, along with the fueler and switch assembly. Basically about another hours worth of work, if I don't get distracted by the GF or the cats?!

Alright, so the ST has a lower profile then the webra, and after throwing it on the scale, I decided that the ST 40 would be more than enough for how I fly, I'm more of a sport pattern flier. So no 3D on my plate means a light mildly powerfull airplane is just what I want, I'm not worried about getting in trouble, even pretty low I can bring them back home without issues. (Unless I swipe a goalpost or a tree) I mounted the ST 40 and put the pitts muffler on, bored the hole for the throttle linkage and set that all up, but tonight is a wash, I have date night like I said, so I gotta go blow money on the GF watching a movie and diner, so this is where I'll stop for tonight. I hope this spawns a buying spree on the GP extra 40 and 60 size so they don't discontinue this great little airplane, and if they do, O-well, it was good while they lasted.

More great pictures.  Now I understand how to setup the pull-pull.  I may do this when I build my next kit - probably the SSE.

I picked up a dubro tail wheel, blind nut, and spring from my LHS - I am going to use a similar setup to what I set up on my two scratch built planes - it has work very well and survived many hard landings - I need to glue a small piece of hardwood to the bottom of the rudder to put a screw through the spring.

I agree that this is a great kit.  I now realize how much stronger this plane will be than the ARFs I have.

I just threw mine on the digital scale, after making sure it's reading correct, calibrated weights are great for getting the real weight of something. I must say, it's over by about 8 ounces, but I haven't lightened anything up yet, I plan on removing some useless weight here and there, I did replace some weak wood with 5 ply birtch and in the places that never needed the extra streingth, will be removed carefully. just so I don't remopve the structural integrity of the plane. The final weight with the cowl,wheel pants and canopy (uncut from the molds) is 5.75 lbs. I can say very easily that the final weight will come to about 5.5 without any lightening on my part, it will fly great at that weight, but I want to see 5 lbs if possible. Areas to lighten, the lower rear bottom plate, top rear plate (just a smidge), the front former for the turtle deck( big excess weight) and a little from the sides going from the rear of the wing saddle to the tail. So if I trim away all the excess plastic on the ABS parts and use dubro 3" foam wheels, along with the diet I put it on after assembly, then add the covering, it should endup around 5 lbs max, with all the mods and reinforcements. Of course, if it flies like it's underpowered, I can always throw the webra 50 in it.

BTW- the horn used on the rudder is recessed, I slid it in place, checked the alignment from the exit holes to the rudder fin, then marked the outline on the rudder, next you trim away enough material to make it sit flush with the leading edge and in my case, flush with the surface on each side as well. I harden all surfaces with CA and the screw holes to prevent crushing of the balsa when tightening the 2-56 screws. Makes a nice and neat "finished" install when done. I think your starting to see that building is not only rewarding and fun, but makes you realize alll the little things you can do to make something better than the last plane you had. I guess it's kinda like the movie, "pay it forward", we all seem to give away little tid-bits to the next guy and don't ask for anything, but the real recipiants are the planes, they just get better and better as we go along.

I trimmed away all the excess plastic on the ABS parts and threw them on the scale, 1/3 LBS, yup, 5.5 ounces, I removed the hose-clamp mount on the pitts muffler, drilled and taped it for 6-32 and mounted the muffler, that added another ounce to the excess weight. So with about 20 minutes of striping away plastic and junk metal stuff, I removed about 6.5 ounces, then I weighed a std servo I mounted for the throttle, and a MC-35 mini servo, another ounce to remove. So now I'm up to 7.5 ounces without any real effort, so with a little more prying, I can lower the total weight to about 5 lbs, then I'll be happy, still have to put the airframe on a diet, that will yeild a good amount of weight savings where it's not needed.

Just bought a digital scale from my LHS so I can see how "fat" my Extra is.  I will put it on the scale tonight.  I am expecting it to be heavy due to overgluing and the fact that it feels heavy!  It is certainly heavier than my Hangar 9 Aresti which has the YS63 in it - but that plane has way more power than I need.    I am really just starting to fly simple aerobatics/pattern, definitely not 3D, so I just need something that has enough power for sport flying.  And if it doesn't then I will buy a bigger motor and put the 46AX in the SSE.

Last night I got the cowl screws installed and most of the tail wheel done - used a 4-40 blind nut similar to what you described.

Yeah, it can build porky, but already I'm back down to 5 lbs, 3 ozs fully loaded. I have yet to lighten the airframe a touch, but I may just leave it at that weight. The only reason I would start making it go on a wood diet is if I can't get it to balance with shifting the receiver and battery. But I picked it up without receiver and battery in it and the CG was only 1/2-3/4" behind the spar. So once I pack that in the nose it should ballance, I did get the cowl and wheel pants built, did one thin coat of automotive filler on the sides, smoothed that over with the sanding bar, then with a sanding pad. Primered the cowl in white primer and set that aside to dry overnight, turned to the wheel pants, I didn't use the overlaping design the mold in. I just trim them down the centerline, sand the halfs on a flat board with 180 grit taped facing up, then line them up and tack them together with CA and work your way around the seam. Sand the seam a little lower and add the plastic filler to that and resand smooth. I had a friend show up last night and that killed my work for the night on the extra. So I'm down to just final fitting of the cowl and wheel pants, do a final smooth out on the airframe, laterally balance it left and right, then I can start covering. I spent about 1 hour going through airliners.com looking at color schemes for the extra, found a few that I loved, but way too much to layout on the plane. So I will narrow it down to one type of design and use the colors I want in that pattern.

I think the AX .46 will be more than enough to do the job of sport flying the plane, it won't be starving for power, and yes, it will feel heavier compaired to a ARF, but then again, newer plane designs are much lighter due to less structure, hence the one hard landing with your pulse and it ripped out the LG plate. I was in shock when I pieced back together my pulse wing like a crash investigator to see that the wing tube only goes through 2 ribs, and the only ply ribs is at the root, the rest was all balsa.The end of the sleeve for the tube in the wing had a small support that never even touched the inner tube. I decided to only build planes from now on, ARFs are built too cheap and are using hotmelt glue in some for assembly, I'll stick to a plane I know is built better and can be flown for many years before I have an issue arise. I'll be back on tonight working on it, I should have the cowl and wheelpants done, then final sand it.

I weighed the pieces separately and it looks like I will be at 5.75 lbs.  I will try to get it down a few ounces to maybe 5.5. 
It took me 40 minutes to install the tank!  Getting the rubber bands around the tank was a pain.  Tail wheel is done and seems to work well</p>

As far as putting the rubberbands around the wood tabs, I take an old 4-40 rushrod or music wire piece and make a loop in the end of it, make the loop loose so you can slip the rubber band off of it. Now fish the rubber band in with the wire while holding the other side, hook it and go to the other side and hook the band, now bring it back to the top and unhook it from the band. The tank acess is only good unough for the tank connections, in the future I'm going to mount the tank on a skid and slide that in place, then secure it with 2 screws on either side or front and back.

Funny - that is similar to the solution I came up with.  I put the bands over the two tabs and then used music wire hooks to pull both of them up while i pushed the foam and then the tank under them.  It took 2 minutes once I had figured out that approach - it took 30 minutes of cursing and trying other approaches to get to that point!

The skid makes total sense.  I will keep that in mind in the future - the tank installations on my other gas planes (only 2) have worked but not been very precise.

My top flight P-47 calls for a similar tank install like the GP extras, I learned the first time I went to put it in, I had no way to install the rubberbands to retain it, so the skid was made out of 1/8" lite ply, and had a 90 degree liteply tab glued to the back edge, that tab sat flush on the back former. It was just a matter of padding out the tank and rubberbanding it all the skid, slide it in and use 2 screws from the wing opening to screw the skid to the rear former, Way easier than fighting and cursing at the rubberbands and the hooks that hold it in, which almost gave me a mental breakdown because I figured that I could build the plane and finish every detail, but I'm not capable of installing a freakin rubberband??!

I am starting to look at finish designs and looking for something fairly simple. Here is one Ilike - Iwould notdo the checkerboard part.

You said you were doing to tint the canopy - how do you do that?

I use pactra window tint, you can clean it off with rubbing alchol if it doesn't turn out right, but after it's tinted, you bond it down with formula 560 canopy glue. Pretty straight forward,  Right now I'm glassing the insides of the cowl and wheel pants, then doing the final sand and she's ready for covering, the motor is mounted and cowl trimmed for it, next is setting up the wheel pants with a ply backer inside for support.

Well, it's final sanded and everything is mounted, drilled and ready for covering except for me being picky on the filler on the cowl and wheel pants, but it's just me being anal. The funny thing about the picture of the extra you posted is not many people know this but there is no BF Goodrich anymore, it's only Goodrich (aerospace). They sold the tire line off years ago to I believe cooper or kelly tires, the name brand was part of the deal. I work sometimes at a Goodrich facility in danbury, CT. I have a few to post too.I also like a few of the checkerboard designs as well, one had it on a diagonal on the nose then turned into a sweeping line across the turtledeck to the tail.

Well, it looks like I have built a tank!  It weighs 6lbs 1 oz.  The good news is the CG is right on the money.  However, I had to add 0.4 oz to the left wing tip to get it to laterally balance.

Any suggestions on how I can lighten it up, or should I just finish it and see how it flies.  I am kind of disappointed right now.  The box says 5.75lbs so I guess I came in 5 oz heavy, assuming the covering doesn't add much.

I figure I could use a micro servo for the throttle, foam wheels, but beyond that I don't have much idea.  The battery I have is 1500mah Nimh that weighs 3.5 oz so I don't think I can save much there.

There are a few areas that can be lightened up, for example, the holes in the rear sides, top and bottom can be opened up about 1/8" all the way around, the front former on the turtledeck can be opened up instead of being solid, as well as the floor in the cockpit area and the dash area. Onthe fuse sides between the former for the wing dowels and the fire wall, you can punch a few 1/2" holes in that area without worry, since you reinforced the saddle to make it stronger in the stress area. You can also add another lightening hole on the bottom rear plate after the big main hole, going about 1/2"-1" from the rear of the fuslage. You can open up the bottom belly pan plate as well, this part is only there for looks, it does very little for the structure. Don't forget to open un the bottom rear of the cowl for motor cooling, that abs weighs a ton, I'm actually thinking of making a mold of the cowl and wheelpants and building some replacements for it. If you really wanted to get crazy and try to make it real light, you could order some graftech carbon-fiber LG and replace the belly-pan sheeting with balsa, hog-out all the rear formers past the rear boltplate as well. It all depends on how you like to fly, if you want a plane that is nimble and lot's of power on tap, lighten it up anywhere you can, even the ribs on the outboard ends, that will increase roll rate. But if you want a good aerobatic sport plane that takes flying in the wind well, make it anywhere between 5.5- 6.25 lbs and it will fly just fine. It's really deceiving when you build it, it seems like a brick, but once in the air, it flies great and doesn't have many bad vices, it's also hard to judge a kit to an arf, the arfs are so lightly built that they tend to be prone to breaking more than not. According to the specs, 594 sq inches=4.125 sq feet of surface area &amp; 6 lbs =96 ounces, so 96/4.125=23.333 ounces, your still under the projected 24-25 ozs per sqft wing loading, let's rework the #'s so it gives you a compairison, say it's 5.5 lbs, = 88 ozs, so 88/4.125=21.333 ozs per sqft, So just 8 ounces will lower the wing loading only 2 ounces per a sqft. So don't be parinoid about 5-6 extra ounces. If it were me, try to wittle it down to the 5.75 before covering. I'll have to do a final assembled weight on mine still, but I'm running dubro foam wheels, the cross checked treaded kind, a 16002/3A niMH, std switch, (3) HS-475's, (1)- mc-35 mini, 8 channel airtronics receiver, 10 ozs tank, ST 40 ring with tatone pitts muffler, aluminum spinner (just as light as a plastic one), pull/pull, twin elevator rods and a fully sheeted tail in contest balsa 1/32" thickness. I will be opening up the former for the turtledeck and cockpit floor, along with adding a second hole in the rear bottom and opening the sides up a smidge and the inside top area on the rear deck plate. Other than that, the rest of the plane is being left alone, I don't want to make it too light, it seems to fly better with a little weight behind it, kinda keeps the enertia durring manuvers.

Thanks - I appreciate the feedback - I was somewhat discouraged when I weighed it.

I will reread what you suggest and lighten some areas before I finish it - basically make the changes that have to be made before covering. If I can save 3 - 4 oz then I know I can pick up a couple more with the servo and wheels but wont do this until I have flown it. It has been very windy out here this year and I would like to see how a heavier plane flies - I may like it better.

The ABS is heavy, I was really surprised- I will open up the muffler hole more and maybe trim 1/2 inch from the back of the cowl all the way around.