Hi

Attached are some pictures from my almost finished Xtra-2000, a disign of Dennis van der Tooren, formal multiple times Dutch champion F3A. It's an all wood disign, and with the CNC-cut parts, very easy to build.... but it always takes more time then you want .

First flight in about two weeks....

Winfried

Easy stuff.

First, sand that sucker smooth as glass. Fill any voids, surface prep is the most critical part. Believe me, paint will show even the SLIGHTEST defect. So take your time, sand the heck out of it, and work it down to 1000 grit.

Here is where a lot of people part ways. Seal the wood. Some people use hairspray and lightly sand, but I use balsarite cut about 60/40 with ironex. Brush it on, let it dry, then sand it smooth.

Now take some finishing resin and .75 oz glass cloth. Cut the cloth so you do your fuselage in 2 pieces, one per side. You will overlap them about 1/4". Cut them larger than need be at first, then trim to size later.

Now mix your resin, and then cut it with acetone 50/50. Take a 1" brush and spread it evenly across the cloth. (put the cloth down first, then apply resin THROUGH The cloth). Be sure the resin is wet, you'll see dry spots if you missed anything. Just keep it thin and even, or it gets heavy. The acetone will evaporate, leaving the resin on the surface to cure. When you get to teh edges, do your final trim and stick it down. Now let it cure for 24 hours, then sand the edges so the glass on the other side will stick, and do the other side.

Now let the whole thing cure for a few days so it's nice and hard.

Sand it down with 400 grit paper until it's smooth.

BRUSH on your first primer coat. Sand it ALL THE WAY OFF. You should be able to look very closely and see a tiny bit of primer in each of the cloth voids. Now spray your next coat, and sand it completely off as well. Spray your 3rd coat, and see how it looks. If it's smooth as a baby's backside, sand with 400 lightly until you can just begin to see through the primer, then go over the whole thing with 1000 grit.

Now go over your plane with a tack cloth and wipe it down with rubbing alcohol, and your ready to paint.

And that part depends on which paint you are using. PPG is hard to beat.

There are as many ways to do it as there are people doing it, but this one is relatively easy and you won't mess up (usually),

-Mike

Thanks Mike, that post was really informative and just what I was looking for. Hopefully I can get this thing done here in the next few weeks and give it a shot.

M Hester, Gerald GW, and Bokuda thank you for all your posts in this thread where you shared information building the Typhoon 2000. You have inspired me to build my own Typhoon. Bokuda, your finished Typhoon is beautiful, just looking at it will keep me motivated to finish mine.
This will just be a simple sport version, with foam flying surfaces and foam will also be used in the fuselage for the top and bottom. I will be using a MVVS 1.50 mounted on its side Calypso style and a fixed landing gear.

More pictures of the fuselage.

Looking good!

Sigk, you have a disgustingly neat work area! It looks like a hospital! Where are all the balsa scraps and sawdust?? ;-)

No kidding. My shop looks like a wood chipper exploded!

Plus tons of scrap monokote in the floor, empty hardware bags.....just finished a plane and haven't cleaned yet.

Way back in this thread, I posted a pic of the parts for my new plane. After a year lay-off due to health problems, it's back on track with a 3M 170 in the nose. I'll post pics soon.

-Mike

Hi
The sawdust? Swept it under the table
Of course this is a hospital, there have been many serious injuries I have had to operate on after flying mishaps through the years.
Seriously, it's so much easier to cut the wood on one table and assemble on another, and on this plane it is a must. The bottom on this plane is only foam and 0,5 mm veneer so it's really fragile. If I put it on scrap balsa or my tools I get dents in it.
Using this method it is possible to build very fast. Foam and veneer is also cheaper than balsa, but I think it will be heavier.
MHester, good to hear you are back. Looking forward to see pictures of your new project. Lets keep this thread alive !
I have been following this thread from the beginning and have enjoyed it very much.

Plug in wings are new for me so I was a little bit worried about drilling for the wing tubes. So before doing anything else the wings were drilled for the tubes. Just filed very sharp teeth on the tube and slowly worked my way inside the foam. And amazingly the wings actually lined up straight Is this a beginners luck or what?

Drilling all the way for the servo wires sure is a lot more work than it used to be with my trusty old 60 size planes.

The wing has been cut and the ply ribs for the sockets been made.

The wing has been lined up and the cores fastened to the workbench ready for gluing in the sockets and ply ribs.

Sigk That room is way too clean for building a plane, it looks like one of the Nasa clean rooms here at the Cape.
MIke Looking forward to your pics also and sent you an email about the other engine.

Here's a few updates, as promised. It started out as a Typhoon 2000, but after building 4 of them and changing things on every one, I realized that this one is so different I can't call it a Typhoon 2000. So, this one is called the "Tempest", and I'm using it as a test platform for my own wing/tail/moment arrangement to iron out a few kinks. And get rid of some nasty habits the T2K had (like not snapping/spinning worth a darn).

Assuming all goes well, I'm going to make the next one totally new....and it will be something to basically replace the Typhoons, with a very attractive, aggressive, and most of all COMPETETIVE design. So hopefully I'll have some plans and fiberglass parts etc. But that's down the road a bit.

So here is a few pics, just to stir the pot.

And a couple of the cowl being lined up, and the BEAUTIFUL power plant





So tonight I'm working on the nose ring assy and lining up the cowl. This part is always a headache.

-Mike

That motor is too pretty to fly. Is that all carbon fiber in your fuse? It looks well done.

Yep, it's C/F accent panel bonded to 1/8" 5 lb balsa. It's as stiff as plywood, and weighs half as much. Plus it's pretty. The cockpit area is done the same way, and I'll smoke the canopy. It should look really unique. Not a lot of wood planes out there with this much detail.

I'll go the extra mile this time around, and post step-by-step the glassing/painting phase, since there's some confusion about that part of it all.

-Mike

Mike, (1st dumb question of the day) Does the Hyde mount there only use one screw a side and what did you do to the bals in the cockpit area to make it look yellow?

Yep, Hyde mount uses only 1 screw, the nose ring bears a large portion of the load.

The yellow? Heh.....it's so technical, such black art, I really dunno if I should reveal such secrets!!!!!

Magic Marker. Crayola, to be exact. Some colors work better than others, black and yellow look great.

-Mike

LMAO!

Hi tph1, maybe we should start a new thread: How to keep a workshop clean ![sm=idea.gif]
The truth is, this is supposed to be the dining room (well,for normal people anyway), but ended up as a workshop.
You see, I am blessed with a very understanding wife

MHester, great pictures. Beautiful cockpit you have there. Four Typhoons ! you really must have liked them! I am very interested to see how your Tempest will turn out.
This is some serious engine you have there, great if you can come up with a new balsa competitive design out of the Typhoon.

The wings have been cut to accept the hardwood blocks for the landing gear. It probably would be best to make some kind of a frame to connect the hardwood block to the leading edge.

Welp, here's a sneak peek.

I totally redesigned the wings and tail. The wings are now 74", 7" at the tips, with a slight double taper. I moved the wing up higher and made it more of a mid wing design, also downsized and reshaped the stabs, and moved them higher as well. I took a touch of dihedral out, but there's really no way to tell until it flies...about any of it.

The fuselage and vertical are very similar, with some reshaping around the nose and tail. Essentially, it's the same through the canopy area and the cowl...and that's about all.

I really can't capture the shape of this thing where it sits, but to see it, it definitely looks aggressive. It will either be very sweet, or a complete dog. All of these changes I did one at a time on my first 3 T2Ks, and this one is pretty much a redesign. So, it's definitely a Tempest, not a Typhoon. Hopefully the next one will kick serious butt, that is if I can figure out how to do a fiberglass cowl myself [8D]

Anyway, this is what the lines look like, sort of......

Mike

Some really nice work, hard to tell the differences from from the pics. But that is a "real" workshop, I can almost smell the balsa from here can't you Sigk?
Tom