I meant the fuse. Not fin

Izzy

Why did you cut the fuselage? The rudder servo is completely in the fin. I just mounted the extension lead socket in the fuselage top and plug in the rudder servo lead when adding/taking the fin off.

Dave

Did I understand correctly?

Maybe I mis-explained
i made a small hole for the extension lead of the rudder servo (which is in the fin) to enter the fuse.
There was no hole for the servo lead to enter the fuse ( the fuse came with 3 holes -1 tube for fin,1for bolt,1 for locating front pin)
the hole I made is located between the pin and tube for the servo extension. However there was a strip of wood under the fuse skin between the 4mm nut and tube

am I making any sense ?
this iPad cannot upload pics -
thx.

Yay managed

Fine. The ply is just to support the T nut for fin fixing. I normally mount behind, but what you have done is OK, nothing to worry about

Dave

Thx

Just a quick point to check....the small carbon locating pin please check as mine just slides out leaving the glue as a perfect mold!

Which reminds me I have to re glue this.

Alan

Started painting. Made a temp
painting room in the terrace. Wife was supportive
on went the primer.
Can anyone advise if I need to
rib down the primer with 400 or 800 wet

800 wet before paint should work out great. I used 600 and 1500 wet but in different areas and couldn't really tell the difference. That with CARF paint which flows and covers very well in one application.

Do I need to rub down the grey primer completely back to the white gelcoat before painting to save weight.?
if i do so would some parts of primer left be visible under the paint?
I will be using 1k paint( paint with hardner)

As Husafreak has said 800 will be fine with water, I only use 2k primer, which had to be mixed especially as I needed to use white to achieve the correct brightness of red on the 2010 Display.
Also if paint has hardner then it is 2k as it is 2 component, 1k is just one component i.e. the paint.
You don't want to 'plaster' the primer on, with the 2k primer I shoot one light coat followed by one wet and leave to dry. When sanding yes I take off as much as possible but you have to judge when to stop as you don't want to go through. If you look at some of the pics of the tail plane you can just see some of the original below the surface but I did not go through etc

When rubbing down the gelcoat I would have used around 600 grit to get a good key onto the fibreglass, there are special fibreglass primers that are flexible and provide a key for following primers, this type of primer is a very thin clear coat and I have used in the past when using 1k primer on glass etc but I have found the 2k primer which I use 700Ti if keyed it sticks like glue, its awesome and you have seen the finish with 2k over the top, preparation is EVERYTHING!

Also if you are using 2k or 1K for that matter use a air fed mask! I have heard of people waking up in hospital after using 2k with no mask!!! Not good for lungs!

Alan

Just for info I will be able, well after today (delivery today of a very nice AC/DC TIG welder) be offering a TIG welding service, this is a piece of equipment I have long wanted to own so I can weld Aluminium so will be able to repair and construct new projects etc
Many times borrowed TIG (Tungsten Inert Gas) units when on site on past but regs have sort of stopped this with contractors not allowed to use customers plant so decided to get my own..

Alan hi
thanks for clarifying
i am then using only 1k primer and then 2k paints
I did put too much primer I think as some of the nice detailing panels has primer in them now and will make them disappear so I rubbed down quite a bit with 800 paper wet
pics attached
I ended up trying to fix that by sitting a few hours wig a small fine needle scraping away the primer in those panel lines
I have note done the fuse yet so how do I get a light enough coat to cover yet not fill those panel lines ???

What red color are you using as you mention needed a special primer mixed to have the red brightness come out correctly. I am using bs381c 538( cherry red) which is the color code for the red on the 2012 display. Last thing I want is for the color not to be correct after this first project
thx
izzy

Would this be ok for base or would I need to go one more round. The body is smooth.

izzy

May i ask how did you make those chairs and other stuff stick to the ceiling of the room?

Izzy

Not so much a special primer just that the paint guys I use had to mix this up white as usually light green or grey. With any bright red, yellow or fluorescent white primer is way to go. Bright reds like the one I am using are very translucent hence why you need white undercoat.

I would recommend that you use a white primer and your red will turn out fine as the 2012 is a bright red as well.

With regards to your question re the primer, 1st is to mix it to correct ratio with thinner if not in spray can, I prefer the 2k with a little more than 10% thinner typically around 13%, spray light coat, don't try and cover everything straight away you will put it on heavy and have possible runs. After the light coat I allow a few min to flash off then do one good wet final coat, don't be tempted to keep going over same bit! If a bit needs redoing wait until dry wet/dry then spray over area again just enough to cover then wet/dry when dry... You will get use to it and it will feel right once you get the practise in..

Alan

FYI I got some one on one from "the man" and have my Hawk flying better than ever now. I posted earlier about elevator sensitivity in the flare and I had been raising expo to combat it but with no luck. I finally decided high (up to 45%) expo on the elevator was just making the elevator more sensitive in the flare. So I went down to 20% (the lowest I had flown with before was 30%) and that gave me a better feel in the flare. In flight the all flying tail seems to be very smooth, no need for flight modes, for me 20% worked great all around. So at 28 flights I feel I have landings dialed. It is very easy to do a fairly tight descending turn to final only closing the throttle once in ground effect and getting a nice spot landing. Very scale like, "rolling off the perch" and all that. I have to be careful not to let the nose come up too much, with the CG at 197mm the Hawk will happily slow to a nose high crawl... You do not want your Hawk in a nose high crawl! Just let it settle with the nose wheel an inch or so higher than the mains.
Next up is the rudder to elevator mix. The problem here is that the Hawk needs so little rudder input in knife edge flight. I will next use a mix on a curve to give me the correct amount of down elevator (with rudder as master) at the 1/4 to 1/2 stick needed for knife edge and then flatten out (no more down elevator) as the rudder stick travels further. I cannot get over how well the Hawk flies in knife edge, it is really something. I'm not ready to do advanced IMAC style maneuvers with it but rolling circles, 1/2 loop with 1/2 roll, basically any rudder heavy maneuvers are easy.
What a plane!

Good to hear you got it dialed in.

Still a work in progress but to use another military term "confidence is high"! Have you been getting some stick time on yours? Or is it winter in VA?

What you says makes perfect sense Husafreak and is the reason why I dont like to use a lot of expo.. I dont think I have more than 15% expo on any jet with the exception of the ailerons on the flash. As you know it softens the control around center only so as you smoothly were increasing elevator in the flare you got to a point where the elevator all of a sudden came in to aggressively. Even though you were not aggressive on the stick. She probably then ballooned on you and as you know a situation like that can quickly take its toll. Glad you got it sorted out thanks for the update on the CG I was figuring I would start at 195MM are your throws set to what the manual recommends as wells?

Yes I tried slightly less aileron throw today, but elevator, flap, and rudder throw are as specified in the manual. I had to do a little cutting to the fuselage to get the specified elevator throw. 195mm should be great. I thought 190mm was a bit too far forward for good aerobatics. Too heavy in the turns.

Glad you are getting into the zone :-)

Dave

Salut Jacques

Votre sonde est terminé et je vais poster demain :-)

Cordialement

Alan

I never get tired of looking at those probes, they are cool. I am worried I might knock mine off just walking around the model though! I usually put something like my fuel jug in front of it.

Word to the wise, check your thrust tube bolts (the ones separating the inner and outer tubes) and maybe add some CA and tighten them down before installation. A couple of mine loosened up, but none of them were very tight. I had never thought to check.

Thanks..

One of the reasons I made the mounting thread (M4) out of aluminum is that if you do knock it and bend it hopefully it will not damage the nose section. If I had bored out and tapped and put a M4 setscrew in to the end of the probe, I believe you would see more damage to nose if someone walked in to it. If anyone does knock the probes and breaks off the M4 thread I can bore out and tap and install a new mounting thread by loctiting a new setscrew made out of aluminum

Alan