Gordon Mc

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Speaking of parts being lifted off a truck - this site has some cool pics - interesting to see how everything got moved from one museum location to the other:

http://images.google.com/imgres?imgu...LG:en%26sa%3DN

DaveMatthews

Hi Henry RG,

Thanks to you for the compliment and thank to modelfliger for posting. The pic of the Hunter conections comes from my website (see pervios links above). I built the model for a customer near Duxford, and it is based on the gate guard at RAF waterbeach just down the road from DF. He wanted a simple set up to avoid mistakes on the flying field. So the airlines are routed through BVM EZ-air conectors and I used mil-spec 9-pin conectors from my work (the day job).

Cheers,

Davie

http://homepage.eircom.net/~skycam/

HenryRG

Tim Edwards

It depends on the exhaust shape of your engine. If you can not get access to a backcopy of RCJI, I will scan it and put it up on the thread. Personally I regard Tom's work on this as definitive. Every time I have followed it, I have been rewarded with a wonderful performance.

Alternatively show me a photo of the engine or if it is standard like a p-80 just the name and I will try and work out the recommendations from the article.

On my Wasp (which he has not tested) and assuming it somewhere between an AJ66 and Wren54, the gap between the bell mouth and the engine duct will be between 40- 50mm! This will put the front bracket of the engine 10-15mm behind the front former of the engine mount. The jet jipe appears to fit to the main joining former of the rear fuselage. (The length of the jet pipeappears to be exactly correct when mounted there and the jet pipe can not be advanced into the front fuselage.) Hopefully moving the engine slightly forward will reduce the need the for ballast.

Brian Borland

Re cables and tubes.....

Don't you hate it when someone steals your ideas ...before you've thought of them!

I'm not sure why Mick didn't consider something like this. I regret that without a tad more than a little butchery I'm stuck with my present set-up now.

Re the engine ...isn't it more an issue of the pipe in relation to the engine ...rather than the other way around?

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

This is what I did for the fairing at the TE of the wings.. this fairing is supposed be be attached to the wings, but I figured it would be more robust if attached to the fuz. I. made up a 1/32" ply guide to the desired shape, and glued that to the fuz ; added some wire reinforcements as a form of micro-rebar then piled in the aeropoxy which I then shaped to suit.

Gordon Mc

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For the canopy retention, I considered numerous different approaches, and eventually chose this...

I made up a new baseplate out of 1/8" ply, shaped to match the bottom of the canopy and with about a 1/4" width throughout. The rear of the frame will eventually be cut open to clear the ejection set etc., but for now I've kept a cross-piece in place for rigidity. I then cut 6 small pieces of aluminium to make tabs as shown, drilled and shaped them and then cut matching slots in the frame to receive these tabs. A long wire pushrod will go through all of these tabs to lock the canopy in place ; to ugide the wire, nyrod inners are glued inside the fuselage and so the tabs must be glued in such a way as to leave the appropriate amount of space below the lip on the fuselage. That may sound confusing, but hopefully the pics will make it clear. The rods go all the way back to the engine bay, and will be operated from there. (This is basically the same kind of approach as used in the BVM Mig 15 fo rthe forward hatch retention).

Although it's not done yet, the engine-hatch end of the pushrods will feature a simple mechansim to ensure that the rods can not move backwards on their own and thereby free the canopy at an inopportune moment.

Gordon Mc

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For the elevator control rod, I was a little concerned about how well it would be retained with the method suggested in the plans, so I went a bit overborad ... the rod itself has its rear end embedded into the rib, so all I cared about now was how well it was retained forward of that. I simply made up some "staples" out of 1/16" music wire, and put 2 of these around the remaining length of the rod (matching holes drilled into the rib and the supporting wood behind it), then I soaked Plasti-Stic through the holes and finally put a gob of aeropoxy over the assembly.

The pic isn't very clear, but if you look closely you can just make out where the staples are.

Gordon Mc

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As well as retaining the canopy, I need a way of retaining my removable cockpit section. I'd already added a couple of removable braces to support the floor, so all I had to do was buld up a sectional floor as shown - the centre section attached to the seat etc will be removed frequently, and is retained by a tab at the front and I'll add another pushrod retainer that goes into the back of the ejection seat to anchor that whole section in place. The sides of the cockpit floor wil lalso be removable wih a little more work, being retained in place by screws from underneath (accessible via the nose-gear door).

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

Also added the rear section for the chute housing...

Brian Borland

Hi Gordon

When I fitted out the tail end I found the slots in the elevator actuator shaft were machined too large resulting in 5mm (3/16") slop in the elevators at neutral. (Both sides). I overcame the problem by fixing .002" shims, bent as a "U" shape, with Araldite 24 Hr Epoxy. The elevators are 100% slop free now. I'm happy with the method of securing the wire ...once again I used Araldite to back up the screws supplied. One has to take care with alignment ..one side to the other also.

I'm working on a simple method to secure the front end of the horizontal tail assembly to the fin. The locating dowls at the front are fine for locating but after tightening the screws to secure the tail assemblies in place, the elevator and tailplane can still be rocked fore and aft ...not a lot ....but it looks untidy. In reality the tailplane has a fairing at the junction on the fin.

I see you removed the fuselage glass at the gun cartridge and link blisters. Didn't think of that .... or maybe you're going to put some shooters in there!!!

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

I did it to give me access to the inside of the sabrinas so that I could stick a finger in there and run a bead of Hysol around - just to make sure it was well attached.

Gordon Mc

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Airbrake - per the kit, this was another of the clear plastic parts.. I elected to make one up from wood - the moving part being a couple of lite-ply formers, with a 1/16" balsa skin and then glassed. For hte hinge, I decided to make up some aluminium brackets and use a music wire hinge pin, which you may be able to make out in these pics.

For the actuator, I made up a horn from 3 laminations of G10, and cut a slit in the belly for the horn to go through. A small former was added to the fuselage inside, both to anchor the aluminium hinge tabs and to ensure that the fuelage held its shape properly for the best possible hinging action. Since the hinge pin is removable, but I obviously don't want it coming out unsolicited, I simply built a fixed fairing in such a way that the fairing captures the pin and the wheel collars that anchor the pin. The fairing can be removed from the fus via 3 small screws.

As usual, I lost some of the pics that I took, but these may be sufficient to explain what I did...

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

Been spending quite a bot of time recently in that endless cycle of fill, sand, prime, sand, repeat... gteting ready for paint. Eventually got there though, and I'm now within a day or so of being done with the colors. (just have to touch up some of the screw-ups that I made, such as spilling a mixing jar of green paint all over a previously finished aileron, dropping the stabs on the ground, etc. )

The paint scheme I used is based on the 43 Sqn Fighting cocks, who I had the honor of sharing a base at RAF Leuchars with for 3 years. I found several slightly different representations of the shceme, and ended up mixing & matching stuff that I liked. (That may not make it true to scale, but what the heck - this is a S***O scale scheme).

The roundels and the checkerboard along the fuselage side were printed vinyl from a company that recently popped up in this forum when someone brought up their "vinyl rivets". They did great work, very reasonable prices, and quick delivery. About the only non-perfect thing about them is that the backing paper on the vinyl was in some cases less strong than the adhesive, with small pieces of backing paper sticking to the vinyl when I peeled the back off. Easily enough fixed with a scalpel tho.

Other vinyl, such as registration numbers etc, I cut with my Roland Sticka machine, and this time I also decided to try using their paint mask material too - it did a great job.

Gordon Mc

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Paint job so far. Still awaiting fihgting cock image + loads of nomenclature from Aeroloft...

sideshow

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That's looking sweet! Time to start thinking about the maiden at the willow.

CJ2002

Looking good, Gordon...thought you might like to see XF515 at the Hunter's 50th birthday celebrations at Kemble...

Cheers,

Dick
England

Gordon Mc

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Cheers Dick. That pic shows the tailfin registration letter in white ; some other sources show the registration letter in red. Since I found out that I had no white vinyl for my cutter, I cheated and did the red even though I prefer the white (it stands out better). Other differences I've seen in the various sources of 43 Sqn markings for the Hunter, include the XF registration sometimes being black, sometimes white ; and some have the whole belly done in silver rather than "light gray", and the silver band right at the hot end sometimes is shown going all the way up around the top of the chute housing, sometimes only on the section below the chute housing, and sometimes just a narrow band on the housing.

Like I said, my scheme is a S***O scale amalgalm !!

Dave Presta

My Feedback: (3)

Gordon, that thing looks great! I like the green camo over the grey, nice lookinn bird. Cant wait to see it all cleared and ready to fly.

Dave

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

After 3 months of not getting anywhere near my toys (that dreaded day-job thing), I finally got some time last weekend to start rigging the aircraft out after having done hte paint. (Though I still need to figure something out on the finish, since I have one glossy wing and one matte one, etc., thanks to some odd behaviour from the 'flex-n-flat' paint.

I spent several hours fussing with the retracts. Two of the brass tubes that are attached to the main cylinders (in place of traditional nipples) were leaking air past the join, and then when I did get the retracts working, two or three cycles later one of the mains would stop working. I found that it was leaking air past the pushrod, and after pulling the cylinder apart I found that the small o-ring that fits around the pushrod and is supposed to form a seal there was travelling up and down with the piston instead of staying in place in its small recess. There's no lip etc to hold it in place, so even when I pushed it back in place it came out again an hour later (I'm now an expert at getting the gear in & out in record time). I eventually applied a tiny speck of PIC plasti-stic CA to hold the o-ring in it's recess, and that seems to be holding out for now.

[ Note - see post 253 : http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=4340159 for a possible cause of the o-ring repeatedly dislodging ]

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

For the airlines and servo extension leads etc, I chose to routre them in a more traditional manner and simply made matching holes between the wing & fuz, plus hole sin the various ribs to run the goodies through, rather htan running then through hte wing tube as per the plans.

While I was doing this, I came up with a useful tool for routing the servo wires ... I took a femle connector with about 1" of leads on it, stripped the wires and soldered them all together to form a short section that would just fit inside an inner nyrod, then I glued that to the end of the nyrod as shown. The nyrod has enough rigidity to allow you to feed it through where you want (instead of trying to dangle a string through etc), while still having enough flexibility to go around curves. The connector on the end allows the servo conector to be easily drawn through all holes, and plugged & unplugged with great ease.

Gordon Mc

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The tanks are in an plumbed too, though I have yet to do the overflow (which I intend to do as a small brass tube in the wheel well, for easy access for my overflow tank), and gear door plumbing is under way. There's still a fair bit to do, but at least I'm finally on the job again (at least for a little while).

Here are some pics of the aircraft looking a little closer to completion:

WhoDaMan

My Feedback: (164)

Hi Gordon:
Your plane is coming along great. When is the release date

Dave

Gordon Mc

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LOL - your guess is as good as mine. This is by far the slowest build I have ever done so far ! I used to spend 2 or 3 hours every day building, and now its more like 2 or 3 hours a month if I'm lucky. Oh well - it makes the aircraft last longer.

WhoDaMan

My Feedback: (164)

That is a pure fact Gordon,,,,, its the build and the time spent. What's the word on the flying of the Hunter
Is it a good flyer, seems to have plenty of wing area and loading. What are you going to put in her?

Dave

Gordon Mc

My Feedback: (11)

From what I can glean from other Hunter builders it should be a fairly friendly airplane, assuming the correct throws, CG etc are known and applied.

Mine will have my 4 or 5 year old P120 in it - a tried, tested, and trusted powerplant. Originally I had considered putting a BMT 120 in it, but then I decided that rather than have an unknown (to me) engine in an unknown airframe, it made sense to split things up - so the BMT went in my Bobcat and the P120 from the Bobcat will go in the Hunter, so that the unknowns were spread around a bit.

Gordon