jroth

My Feedback: (60)

Last night Joe and Dennis came over to my house and we worked on the vertical fin and the horizontal stabilizer.

jofunk

Mr Roth stopped by to take some measurements of the control surface layout on the wing. Mr Abrahamian got his wing plug ins glued in the wings and was able to plug both wings into the fuse. He had to put it on the floor to put both wings on due to its huge bigness,(100" would have been fine). I have been slowly moving along with the sheeting on my vertical. John Roth and Dennis Degregorio made pink foam filler blocks for all the planes which were cut to the plans but fit slightly different on each plane so I glued on the block under the tail with some urethane glue which worked well filling The slight gaps.

jroth

My Feedback: (60)

Dennis and I have been working a few hours every night, we have 102 days of building left until my July 4th deadline, that should give us 200 to 300 building hours to complete this project.
I ordered two reference books and Glennis 6" wheels and brakes yesterday. I will probable order a light kit next week.
John Abrahamian cut and assembled my wing mounts; I took them apart, cleaned, glued and screwed the parts back together. I test mounted the mounts to the bulkheads, I wish I would have made the "sub-assemble" outside of the plane like Joe did.

Tonight Dennis and I worked on closing the vertical and fuselage in with sheeting.

The last picture is the hinging of the lower rudder; the upper rudder is hinged the same way.

jroth

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I am thinking about a paint scheme, I emailed the Nation Naval Aviation Museum in Pensacola today, I hope they can help me out with some photos and documentation.

rhklenke

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I can't help but asking, what are you (or is that John?) so pi$$ed about?!?

Bob

jroth

My Feedback: (60)

Hi Bob,

That is John Abrahamian; we call him Mr. Fun, welcome to our world!

Vladimir made us 5 sets of wing mounts, John picked up his set and my set. John brought my set to my house and we can not find them, Mr. Fun said he would make a set for my plane, you can see how happy he is.

Thanks for noticing.

John

owl182

The truth actually was that they said I was smiling way too much, and they wanted a more serious picture-so I blew away the smile. Dennis was standing there with a cell phone camera-what else was there to do.

I think the fabrication of the replacement plugin's turned out quite well.
I'd cut and fit every piece until the blades slid in quite smoothly. The bracket is made of 2 bars of 3/16" 6061 T6 aluminum capped by a 1/8" aluminum plate. These trap the spar against the 1/4" aircraft bulkhead.The 4 inner screws enter drilled and tapped holes in the bars, the 4 1/4 x 20 bolts at the corners hold the brackets (plate and bars) to the bulkheads - all screws being stainless steel (no cheap zinc plated junk please!). I told J Roth to disassemble them and epoxy the plates before screwing them back together (the first bracket I assembled myself turned out satisfactory). Also important is to have a spar in them as the glue sets and screws are tightened. I told John to epoxy the brackets to the bulkheads and snug the bolts but not jam them too tight. Over-tightening the larger bolts could have deformed the brackets enough where they might stick. Evidently they worked exactly as I'd planned, no play just a slide in fit-otherwise John would be building the one piece wing and fuse version of the Panther at 1/4 scale. I'd love to have seen that at that July deadline he's planning.

Mr Fun

jroth

My Feedback: (60)

Dennis and I worked for about 6 hours last night, we started by installing FW-1 to the landing gear/ wing mount box. Then we glued F-11 and the inlet to FW-1. The next step was sheeting most of the top of the winglet, leaving the area above the landing gear blocks open. Then we flipped the fuselage over and sheeted the bottom of one winglet.

This morning I will sheet the other bottom side of the winglet and layout the spars on the sheeted wings.

This afternoon we have a session at Joe's house, I have to prepare the wing for the aluminum spars.

jroth

My Feedback: (60)

Well, it's 11am and I just finished sheeting the second winglet and I layed out the aluminum spars on the wings.
Hopefully I will be able to install the spars in the wings on Sunday.

100 more days until the July 4th goal!

jroth

My Feedback: (60)

Saturday night we had 4 of the Panther guys and two friends working at Joe's house. Joe provided us with a cheeseburger dinner with all of the fixins, thanks Joe!

Dennis and Joe helped me create the wing spar paddle system to be plugged into the wing spar mounts, they helped me sand the 4 degree dihedral into the wing root and cut the wing to accept the spar paddles.

John worked on his rudder while Hal filled in some sheeting around the fin. John informed me that I must have used a F9F-5 drawing when I installed my rubber counter balances, because the balance on the lower rudder is too high for a -2 version. John got it right on his.

Vladimir worked on his horizontal stabilizer and his vertical fin.

jroth

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Here are some of my earlier photos that are missing from post #10:

Dennis is working on stringers.

John is working on shaping the inlets.

John is working on shaping and glassing the nose cone plug.

jroth

My Feedback: (60)

Here are some more photos from 2010 post #10:

More sheeting and inlet work.

Wow that sheeting looks bad, with a few suggestions on using smaller planking, sanding and light filler, it looks way better now.

In the inlet photo, you can see John's scratch built twin boom project's hatch "under glass".

hooker53

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J you all are looking good on these builds. Can't wait for the maiden of whice I hope you video all of them!!!

jroth

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Hi,

Thanks for your support!

We have four planes at almost the same stage:

John A has glassed his horizontal and he built his rudder, he is finishing his vertical.

Joe has his gear installed, wings installed, vertical and horizontal installed.

I am installing the spars into the wing and reconstructing the rudder.

Vladimir is building his vertical and horizontal.

We will continue with the photo gallery and we will video tape any testing and flying.

jroth

My Feedback: (60)

Joe and Dennis came over this afternoon, we jigged up the wing, trimmed down the spar paddles and spread some Gorilla white urethane glue. We let the glue dry for about two hours before we disturbed the setup. We got both wings mounted!

The plane has really stiffened up, we still hear some balsa wood cracking when we handle the plane, but the whole thing is getting more durable.

Mr Fun and Dennis stayed at Joe's house until 3am last night, but Mr Fun did not want to miss out on today's Panther Party, so he was finishing up the top of his vertical stab and rudder, look at his nice smile.

Tim Redelman

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Wow John you guys are really kicking butt on those birds nice job! By the way when exactly and where exactly will WE be flying those sweeties!!

Tim

jroth

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Hi Tim,

Thanks for your kind words, I have really turned up the heat on this building project since midwest ski season has ended. We started around Halloween, I worked for about a two weeks, I took the winter off and I resumed the build about 3 weeks ago. I only have about 5 weeks of build time on the Panther so far, but I have had alot of help from Dennis, Mr. Fun and Joe.

I am hoping that we get an invite to Winamac to test fly, maybe around July 4th weekend.

John

Tim Redelman

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SAAAAAAWEEEET! we'll have hot dogs and brats a waitin baby! With chef Greg on the flipper! Whos plane do I ,,, I mean we get to fly first?

Tim

Greg Wright

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Hey Timmy That's "FIVE STAR"***** Chef Greg to all you fooooooool's. The "Tip Bucket" will be next to the Grill.

jroth

My Feedback: (60)

Dennis and I worked last night, but there was not much progress to see.
Dennis worked on sanding and filling the vertical fin and I sanded and filled the wing spar installation and worked on constructing a new rudder.

jofunk

Here is some progress from Saturday. Vladimir made some skins for his hoz. stab so I sheeted his foam cores in my vacuum bag. He took the time to edge glue all the pieces so I only had to tape the trailing edge. John Roth and Dennis sanded the 4 degrees into Johns wing. Vladimir worked on the tail section of his fuse. The canopy plug was finished by Hal so Mr Fun took some measurements to work on a vacuum table to make some canopys. That's Hal in the background putting some leading edge on vladimirs hoz. stab. I made some hinge covers for my hoz. stab out of a file folder. It is nice and thin and once it is glassed it will be very hard. I used someones Hoz. stab saddle to get 2 chunks of foam for my rudders I hot wired the shape with some templates and them threw them in the vacuum bag with some sheeting.

Jaws3D

My Feedback: (5)

This is the current state of Panther #5. I just completed planking the bottom. I have not posted anything on my build up until this point since it would have been redundant to the 4 trailblazers I am following. However, my planking is a bit different than the others and thought I would share my progress. I decided to use a harring bone pattern and place the planks on a 30 degree angle. Hope the picture shows this. The planks are ~15 mm wide which gives me 5 planks from a 3" wide sheet of 1/8" balsa. I started at about the center section and worked backward at first then working toward the nose. I was able to make the curves @ the tail cone without breaking planks, however I ran into problems completing the compound curve at the nose. You may be able to see where I had to end the diagonal planks and finish up with 6 longitudinal pieces. I did decrease the width of the planks a bit and selected softer wood around the nose but I was still having problems so in the end I went with what I did. Have a bit of sanding to do before I turn it over and start on the top. I am thinking of using this method to plank the top as well. Since I now know where the problem area's are I can dry fit a few and see if I can follow the curves. I may just end the diagonal's where the canopy starts @ the nose and use longitudinal planks forward of that, will see.

Another difference with my build is that the 5 bottom stringers are made from poplar while the remaining are balsa. I found a nice straight 9' - 1X2 piece from Home Depot. Vladimir cut this into 10 - 3/16X1/4 strips on his home made table saw which has a very thin blade with a lot of teeth. I laminated these together to make 5 - 3/16X1/2 stringers which run the full length of the fuselage without any splices. Maybe overkill but I thought it would add a little more strength.


Cheers,

Just Plane Bill

jroth

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Bill,
Nice work!

Vladimir, here are the elevator photos.

vholis

This is Panther #4, which I am currently building.
-Vlado

jofunk

That's very good looking Vladimir............ I'm talking about the fuse......... Here are a few pix of my tail with the sheeting finished. Pay no attention to all the blobs of light filler. Most of it will be sanded off. I also hinged my two rudder sections and started on the block that separates them. Each section will have its own servo to make things easier. I am seriously thinking about putting two receivers in the plane and splitting most of the control surfaces. I will be able to split the rudder too. I also smeared some light filler an one of the tip tanks so I can start grinding that to shape.