RE: CAP or Extra?
 

As usual, I did start the other wing panel, but I forgot to throw the camera on the charger till the end of the night, but it's the same process, except quicker. Next stop after tonights building sequence is the fuslage. The fuse is where the major mod comes into play, mainly the gear plate attachment. It's not that it's a bad design, but the lite ply isn't really sufficent to survive rough landings and rough grass runways. The other mod is to the saddle/nose doubler, in the event of a flip over from wheels catching something or just slaming it into the ground on it's main wheels, the whole nose can break off from the notch of the wing saddle former straight up. Really it's a simple fix and just takes a few minutes to modify.

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

Here's the second half framed up, time to remove from the board and join the two and finish sheeting and alerion install.

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

I am almost done with the fin and rudder. I used a couple of pieces of 1/8 brass tubing to reinforce the counterbalance.

What is the procedure you use for gluing the sheeting on? Are the pins you have in the photos sufficient to keep pressure on the sheet or do you glue the sheets to the ribs separately?

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

So now, the two become one, just a little sheeting and alerions to go. then it's time to build a fuslage.

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

I am impressed by everything except the Coors - you need to get some decent beer! Or perhaps you use the Coors to make the sheeting more pliable - that might be a good use for it!

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

Yeah, I know, that's my secret wetting agent for making the balsa bend smoothly around the ribs! If that doesn't work good enough, I guess I could try natty light:):D But last night I got the two joined and lined up right, don't go by the plans trying to keep the distance between the two inner wing ribs at 5 &1/2 ". Fit the two panels together so that the W2 ribs are parallel to eachother and the wing joiners are touching bolth ribs W2. If you mark everything per the book and put the two panels together, you'll probibally end up with a 1/8" gap with the joiner not touching the sides. Hopefully tonight after work I can sheet the top and set the alerions, still haven't decided weather or not to use 2 alerionn servos or one. But that decision has to be made soon, due to installing the tubes in the wings for the wire to run down.

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

5 words ray, you make it look easy....... seriousley they should employ you to re write the manual for that thing, and re do all the photos. come allong fast telling ya wont be long before ya flying that just stay away from them goal posts and fences or il be handing my name on here to ya,

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

No, I don't want it to get to that point, I'll just build and retire from flying if I keep killing them into in-mobile objects. So I'm taking it that you and mark have a pot going? just to see how long till I clip something with it, what's it up to 20-30 pounds?:):DIf so, put me down for 30 that it will last 3 flights before my dwindling depth perception kicks in and the poor extra piles into another pole or tree. I didn't work on it last night, helped my brother with a project for his work, came home late but I had fun BSing and riding the dirt bike around for a while. But tonight I'll sheet and finish the wing, might take tomorrow off and work on it some more along with the other Barf I bought to get me back in the air fast. Not a bad one though, I think the super skybolt will be a decent throw around bipe, just have to reinforce the firewall and add a better tailwheel system to it. I think that is the new home for the rcv 91cd I bought. It fit's within the cowl completly, although the enya 80 will be a lighter engine, seeing that it's nothing more than a 60 fourstroke bored out to an 80.

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

Crashalot is right on the money - your pictures a much more helpful than the manual. Tonight I put the first wing together and just followed your photos. The masking tape works great.

I just realized that Crashalot is from my homeland - although I am a Southerner from Hampshire. I had a girlfriend when I was at university who was from Ilkley - beatiful part of country. I came over to California 20 years ago to work for 6 months and never left. The thing I miss the most is the pubs and the beer. Although I loved the southern beers, especially Wadworths and Fullers, Theakstons was superior. Have a pint of Theakston's Best for me!

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

The last brew I had that was english, I almost threw up, it was some honey wheat ale,......[:'(] But I guess it's all an aquired taste. I did get the top sheeted and the trailing edge too, but not the center, I was going to take today off, but my concious got in the way. I ended up going to work and playing detective for a bit, seems a customer who bought a new piece of equipment from our company decided he needed the refrigerant out of it for something else, but the funny part of it all is he wasn't expecting me to do soo much leg work to verify that the unit had a charge of refrigerant in it when we started it up. Plus the fact that I did not one, but 6 leak checks at various pressure increases, so there was a charge of r-134a to start, 4 months later, there was nothing, do leak check and find 0 leaks over a 8 hour span. Not even a oil drop to be found, now call the customer and say it lost it's charge due to theft, the problem is the charge for the single circuit is 225 lbs of r-134a, at about $8-9 a lb so it's about 1900 in lost refrigerant. Not too bad but hard for the customer to swallow. I knew I should have stayed home and worked on the extra instead! But alt least I have the weekend to putz around on it. I'm about to place an order for various items needed for the planes I'm working on recently, need a pitts muffler for the extra, and a tail wheel, have the servos, engine and other stuff, need to order a few other servos for the GP skybolt and a heavy duty switch, and a kit for someone I know.;)

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

I now have all the servos, battery, switch, that I need for the extra because I crashed my LA Racer today. The engine lost power and I was flying in a strong cross wind - I think there might have been dirt in the fuel that got into the carb because I was at the very bottom of a gallon of fuel and I don't use a fuel filter. Anyway it lost power n a low fly by and I turned into the wind and was focused on why didn't i have power and I guess I stalled it. It went straight in. My first significant crash with a gas plane. The motor looks ok. Reciever and servos all seem to work.
I was getting bored with that plane anyway. It makes room for the Extra!

Honey wheat ale - that sounds like Mead which dates back thousands of years.

What are the little blocks up against the trailing edge?

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

I would like to know what you think of the RCV engine?? I built a plane for a customer several years ago, a Hell Cat, and talked him into the RCV because of the large prop used and it fit so well inside the cowl. Well, that and I have never got to fool around with one. The plane came out so well it turned into a hanger queen and has never left the ground so I have still never gotten any feed back about the RCV.
Just wondering.

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

Boddingtons, that was the brew, it almost made the night a total waste. But I know where your comeing from on the "getting bored" aspect, I felt that way with the pulse, just had something not right about it, didn't seem to do the moves like you told it to do. Didn't matter how or where you shifted the cg or the throws, the plane is only going to be a second stage trainer no matter which way you slice it. The little blocks are for my hinges, weather I go with CA, robarts or klett style hinges, it gives it a little more wood to bite into and not let go. An absoloute must for robart hinge points.
As far as the RCV, it's the CD model, the regular RVC is good, but they suffered from overheating, due to the way the cooling fins were made, air tends to skip over them, because they are 90 degrees to the air flow, the CD model is your traditional setup, the cylinder still rotates, except they are using the crank as the power take off, not the 2:1 cam reduction. So it has no valve cover, just an upper bearing. So it will hide inside the cowl of the skybolt, but it's a heavy piece of aluminum, they say 24 ozs w/muffler. But it feels alot heavier, and you have to offset the engine mount lower by 3.6mm, due to the bolt together case. But everybody says it's a great running motor. I guess I'll find out soon enough.
For the extra, I'm running a good old .40 GS supertigre w/pitts muffler, std servos all around and keeping it as light as possible, I'm watching the weight as I go, wiping off excess glue, picking light componets and only adding extra wood where needed to make it live through abuse. So far, the longest part of the build is going to be the covering portion, but that's just me, I want to apply it once and try my hardest to avoid having to come back to reshrink it in the future. But now-a-days, I here that most plastic covering materials are worthless, I use to prefer monocote, but if what's on my ARF skybolt is the new monocote, no freakin thanks, I'll use seran-wrap before appling that, ultracote is ok but has it's issues with not bonding strong with the adheasive. Man just give me some of the old goldberg supercote or super monocote and I'd be in heaven with plastic stuff again.
I've been kinda busy puttinig together parts of the skybolt, so no progress on the extra, but it sure does make me appriciate a kit built plane over an arf, I have seen the quality of arfs go from bad to pretty good, but now that all manufactures are trying to be price-point, the quality of the covering and structure assembly has been lowered again to questionable. You know, years ago, I use to assemble Arfs for 2 hobbyshops, just for customers, so I've assembled quite a few in my life, and there were only about 2 or 3 that seemed decent. But I've only owned about 4 Arfs that I thought were good enough to make the cut. One of them is the H9 Cap 232, in my avitar, the GP 1/3 Pitts & the Herr lil' extra. Besides hardware preferences, that was the only issue I found, the GP pitts was the only Arf that I used 90% of the supplied hardware due to it being good 4-40 sized hardware. This is why I build, I know the plane is solid, built properly, balanced laterally, covered nicely and the hardware is hand picked and intergrated into my build. Generally. I find my kit built planes seem to take more abuse, look better and retensioning the covering isn't on the list of maintainence.

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

I have now finished the first wing and just started the second. I also spent some time taking all the parts out of my LA Racer and cleaning the OS 46AX - hopefully it will run. I used some old RC car fuel to rinse it out really well and then put a bunch of after run oil in it.

I am also reading through the manual of the SIG SSE that I ended up picking up from my LHS this week! I just didn't have the heart to say no, after I had ordered it, and then decided to get the GP Extra. So, I figure I will build the SSE as well. It looks like it might be easier to fly. I really ought to be flying second-stage trainers as you describe, but just prefer to look of the Extra.

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

The SSE is an easy to fly plane, it really is easy to build too, but, it has alot of control surface behind it too. They bolth fly very well, but the extra from GP is a little more refined and smother like a pattern plane, where the SSE is more of an extreme fun flyer type plane. Basically a copy of my HERR lil' extra or the other way around if you want to get technical about timelines. I flew my lil' extra today and I must admit, it's stupid simple to fly, but with the expo turned down a whole lot. On normal rates, it's a handfull. Plus, when you speed up a design like that, it becomes touchy on the sticks. The GP extra is tame throughout the whole speed envelope and does only what you tell it to do. Fly the GP extra, you won't be disappointed.

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

Thanks for the info. Based on what you say about how they fly the GP is more what I am looking for right now. The SSE does look easy to build. Building the stab, fin, and wings the GP is close to a scratch build, except that the ribs are cut out and the LE and TE are shaped. Obviously the fuse is where the big difference is.

I am making decent progress on the second wing - go faster than the first. Starting to get the hang of pins and clamps with the wood glue. It seems like the joints are stronger.

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

I'm glad you like the extra so far, but I would throw the SSE on the board right after the extra is done and flying. One is like a minicooper, very manuverable (SSE) the other is like a aston martin vantage (GP extra), alot more refined and smoother at any speed. I need to hop back onto the extra when I get home, out and about for mothers day. But will clean the bench and resume building, I just need to epoxy the tail feathers on the skybolt and the rest can be done to the side.

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

Here are a couple of photos of the wings.

I started cutting the hinge (CA) slots and had forgetten how much I suck at doing this. Forty minutes to cut 4 slots before I started to lose my patience. What is the trick to cutting slots faster? Are those hinge cutting tools any good?

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

As far as the slots go, first mark the centerline down the liength of the trailing edge, then mark where the hinges are going to go, make the hinge marks about a 1/4" wider than the CA hinge your using. Get you hobby knife out with the #11 blade on it and line it up on the center line you just made on the hinge area marks, lightly start the slot, like your cutting on the line, keep cutting on the same line till your about 1/2 to 2/3rds through, now make the plunge cut with the blade vertically, once the slot has been cut through, run the #11 blade back and forth in the slot to help open the slot up. The blunt back side of the blade will shave it wider and provide room for the CA hinge, they do make blades for making CA hinges, but I do own a Slot Machine, and yes it's the best thing since sliced bread, just line it up and pull the trigger, a CA hinge slot in about 1-2 seconds. But if you do small planes with it, you'll need to buy another set of blades and trim them down to 1/2 the size. But for the 40 and up planes, it's the correct size for standard CA hinges. I use robart hinge points, so I have the jig for centering them on the trailing edge, makes life bearable when trying to drill a centered and square hole in the trailing edge. I'll be back on the wing build tonight, I came home too late to do anything on either plane.

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

Well, the extra made it back to the bench, servo mount and top sheeting is in place, do yourself a favor, cut the 36" sheet like they say, and then make your curved cut and copy it to the other side, before you glue them down, take the 18 3/4" sheet and trace the pattern on one side. This will give you the same shape part and you can adjust the other side of the lower sheet by lining up the trimmed off curve on the other side of the lower sheet.

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

well ray watching ur builds of planes is like watching grass grow haha. but thats only to women that has no intrest in our hobby. to us big kids its like watching rome being built. you certainly are a neat and clean builder you make a good guru matey keep up the great work

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

I bought a Slot Machine. Wow - best $20 i have spent in ages!

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

Told ya.:):D

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

Hmmmm, I find myself sitting on a mountain top at a cell site, waiting for the rain to stop and thunder storms in the distance, I have about another 2 hours of work and I'm out of here but I'm hoping I don't get hit by lightning. I'd rather be home building right now![&o] O well, life suxs sometimes, just gotta roll with it.

RE: CAP or Extra?
 

Any progress? I just layed up a kevlar reinforcement on the bottom spar, not needed but super light and makes the spar about 150% stronger, as long as you use the right resin and build it into the wing. I lay it on the spar, tack one corner with CA, pull it stupid tight to the other side, tack it again. Now you have a piano string, mix up some west system or MAS finishing resin and wet it out, squeegie away the excess, till it's flat and smooth, add the center sheeting and viloa! done, tie in the cap strips and finished .