Five more minutes of sanding on the proto type Mike an I am ready for covering. Thats right covering, my problem is I have run out of color schemes. If ANY body has any they would like to share please post your pitures top an bottom. An I am sure everybody else would like to see yours too

Well spoken Mike. I know what you mean, shoot I'm so tough I can't build for myself

Lawrence

Mike,

Is this the light you can see?

Cheers
Jason.

Well, if you shine the flashlight from the OTHER end, then yes

-Mike

OUCH!!!!

With Hatiroli 821 and 822, I have the alignement problem since it is not going in the center of the bottom. I believe the mount is not at the 3 degree when I glued the mount plate but could be at 4 or 5 degree and the muffler is not coming center since the hatorili header is at fixed angle from the engine exhaust.

I am just wondering to know if any flexible header setup is avilable like the flexible connecting tube form the header to muffler.
I have see the NMP header on central and teflon header tube.

But I am not sure how all of these go in together.

Can somebody using the NMP header with the Teflon tube post their picture for my reference?

Srikar

My header don't line up eather, an it was made just for this plane an engine. Ordered it from someone in Canada.

Wendell,

I've yet to see ANY header line up absolutely perfectly down the center of the fuse. Even the ones for my rear exhaust OS 1.40's were not perfect. It really doesn't make any difference though. Even the short hatori header and pipe I'm using now, i'm not 100% they are dead center on the fuse. I know that they certainly weren't aligned with any special tools. Mike and I set the header and pipe where it looked close and drilled the holes. Makes absolutely no difference. On the old pattern planes, it wasnt unusual for the pipe to be significantly offset from the center of the fuse and headers had to get around nose gears and such,

Arch

Sounds good to me on that . How about the tunnal for the pipe, it will have to be opened like the pic shows right, on the v2 the belly was removable not like the V3.

Do my eyes deceive me, or is that a huge dip on the left side of the fuselage?

optical dillusion ryan> it is sunday morning!!!! LOL!

gary

No dip here

Wendell,

You can make it open tunnel or not. On my old Eclipse the pipe was enclosed, but you had to install it from the front. It was a pain, but could be done. Having an open tunnel is kind of an advantage though. Makes it easier to check on it and such. You can do it enclosed if you wanted though,

Arch

Hi all,

Just finished getting the electric twins in fiberglass. I wasn't able to buy the old standby .55 oz cloth from CST (out of stock at the time) and went with the .7 oz cloth and WOW what a improvement in usability and fill-ability with the microballons. Mike also used the .7 cloth on the other two electrics. We both agree that the advantage will be less primer weight to fill the weave. It's also even easier to apply the microballons using the "rub" method. The reality is primer can add 4-5 oz and is where the big weight gain is, not the cloth and resin.

Between the rain, wind, cold and pollen I had a week of delays. But the twins are looking sweet. I still have to prep and finish the fiberglass but should have these two in primer by the end of the week.

I'll post some pics later....

cheers!

Dean

here is a pic of the twins ready for trimming. I should have the fiberglass close to finished tomorrow, there might be a little-fix it here are there but anything would be minor. Oh it's spring time in Atlanta, to much pollen outside, the other picture is the cover of a black grill tottally covered and green with it. No painting outside, I did the microballoons outside on the twins and I am sure I got .5%of the weave filled with this green stuff. I hope to have them in primer in about 2 days, we got more rain coming in for friday, so I am hoping to get them all primered and ready for wet sanding while it's raining

Time to set up my 2-car garage as a paint booth...

later all!

dean

Here a shot from this morning. I did the last bit of the glass work, finishing the front of the lower turtle deck and the fin posts of the twins.

I am really impressed with the .7 cloth, really happy with the results so far - the close up shot is without any sanding yet. the glassed surface looks awesome and should require very little time sanding = prepping before primer. Very happy so far with the glass on these two fine planes. If all goes well I should be in primer tomorrow !!!!

my personal VF3 is sitting in primer just waiting for the twins.... hope to paint all 3 at the same time !!!

Dean/Mike

I just finished the initial sanding after primer. I used the KlassKote primer and was very easy to sand. After initial sanding, I added 12 Grams of primer.

Question here is,
Can I just start adding trim colors directly on sanded primer or I must use the base color (white) before the trim colors?

Sorry for duplicate photos. I am not able to delete one.

..Srikar

Hi Srikar,

I see from your photo that you sanded off almost all the primer. I am not sure of your painting experience, I''ll share mine.

You really have two options,

A: If your using a high solids paint like Concept DCC. you could do a white base - a little on the heavy side and then wet sand it to perfection with 400-600 grit. Be prepared to do touch up and work on pin holes. You could be surprised to fin a lot of pinholes and areas where you sanded thru the cloth. So going straight to a white base could /can be done if your base is sealed and smooth. Did you wet sand the plane in this photo?

B: Shoot another coat of primer with your paint gun. Fix any pinholes / dry areas and then sand that coat of primer to perfection with 400-600 grit wet. Try to get a very thin and even coat of primer. You might have to go back with a large airbrush and shoot more primer in spots where you sanded thru. Then shoot color without the need to base the entire plane in white. If your using DCC the colors cover the gray primer very well. If your using a lesser quality of paint you may have to base your whole plane in white.


I would suggest you shoot a nice even coat of primer and see how well you filled and sealed the wave before you shoot any color. What can happen is if you shoot a white base coat now you might have too many small surface defects like pinholes, dry areas, and bare wood. You won''t know until you spray paint on the surfaces...

Also - the paint brands of "shop line" and "value pro" are very thin paints and you should avoid using them, my suggestion is to also stick to DCC Concept...

It looks like your on the right track, the plane looks great so far. Good luck and happy priming

Dean

Hey Srikar,

I was just looking back on the discussion on primer and there is more stuff I wrote back on page 14 and around there..

http://www.rcuniverse.com/forum/fb.asp?m=6925919

There is more info on the whole fiberglassing and priming subject.

good luck !


Dean

Dean,
Since I used the epoxy paint, was not sure if I can go for white base stright. I remember you saying on the other post that, we can go white base after the sanding of rolled primer. So I thought of following that.

But as you said, I may find too many defects on white base if go for it now. So it may be a good thing for me to go for second coat of primer as you suggested.

Also, I got my Scorpion 2 with Tank compressor last week along with the eclipse BCS from Dixieart . I am thinking to use that for primer step by step.

I dry sanded the plane shown in photo.

Will post the pictures after the 2nd coat of primer and let you know how it goes.

..Srikar

I hope the V3 flys as good as the V2 doe''s. Racking my brain on a Color Scheme for the 2. Got any Ideas Mike on colors. Will be Monokoting,I am not good enough to glass.

Wendell,

As far as how they fly, if you like the V2, you'll LOVE the V3....it is a total step up. The plane does everything better. The v2 flew really well, the V3 is GREAT!!

Arch

Srekar,
Yeah , I'd put more primer on that. My goal with primer is to be able to block sand the final coat and not cut through anywhere. Yes, you want it thin but you also want it to be uniform. Paint doesn't fill or "hide" as well as primer does. My guess is if you painted what you have there, you'd be dissapointed. Don't rush it. Put more primer on and block sand each coat. If you find that you sand through in only a few spots you can spot repair with an airbrush and feather in the edges before you apply the first coat of paint. The goal is to NOT use a lot of paint so reduce it more than you would if you were painting a full scale car. This will allow you to run a little bit lower pressure at the gun and still get good atomization while applying LIGHT coats of paint. You should be using a gun with a fairly large fluid tip for the primer (1.5 - 1.7mm) but you want to use one with a smaller tip for the color (1.0 - 1.2mm). If you use a large tip for the color you'll end up with heavy coats of paint no matter what you do. Only put on enough paint to cover and hide. If you're going to wet sand each color (like I do) then put on one additional coat once you see a uniform finish. I like to apply a white base first - maybe 2 coats all over (very thin wet film thickness) then an additional coat or two on the areas that will stay white. This is important if your spraying red or yellow over gray primer since those colors are semi transparent. Wet sand this then apply your first color. Pull the tape off ASAP. Let that color harden and wet sand it - pay close attention to the tape edge. You want that as thin as possible but don't cut through! Repeat as necessary. Try to avoid using clear (it's heavy) but if you must, try to lay it on really smooth so that you won't need to do a lot of sanding / polishing. I'll post some pic's of my V2.2 in the V2 thread real soon. I just painted it with Nelson (water-based) Urethane. A little different than the PPG stuff but the results are similar.

John Pavlick

Hrmmm...well color choice is personal, just make sure you can see it.

Oh, and don't use red primer [)]

Looks pretty good Wendell! You had a little bit more of a challenge having a prototype kit, but you managed to build what looks like a fine plane there. Congrats!

Oh and echo what Arch said. The v2 is an awesome plane, but the 3 is like cheating....best plane out there? Nahh who knows, but defintely in the top of the bunch...

-Mike