Hi you all!

I was kind of... how to say it... busy being a first time father!


Here's the proof:

Ok, back to our business again!

Martinoto, the clevises are Dubro, and I've got them from Mirax (www.mirax.cl). If you don't know them, let me say that they're great. They send you merchandise door-to-door, and the price for the items are very competitive. Search here: http://www.mirax.cl/buscadorx.php?claset=b073
By the way, the horns haven't ball bearings, but they're really great anyway!. (Don't forget to switch the page to "Argentina")

dbacque, let me tell you a couple of things... in the first place, your Epsilon is one of the best I've seen (and I've seen many)!!! The cowl work is exellent, and the covering too. Nice.
The stab problem was solved, but not by CAModels: a friend of mine had a semi destroyed Epsilon at the time, and he was building his second. He gave me the new kit stab, as the original was ok for him. It fitted perfectly in my fuse.
The factory told me "No problem, bring the fuse and the stab, we'll change it... anyway, if you use that stab it will not affect the flight" What??? "maybe you have the 'second' version of the Epsilon fuse, and the first of the fuse". Yeah, sure. What I think is they have boxed a mistaken part. That's it.

To be short, I have a 'right' stab now, and it's coverer, as the wing is:

dbacque, sorry for the late reply... as you must know by now, the parts on the cockpit floor are the support parts for the cowl. Mine also has quality issues on one side.

I will start with the cowl work tomorrow. New pics are coming.

Some cowl work...

The cowl's surface isn't all the smooth as I wish... It will demand some sanding. Start the cutting!
Measured the prop base diameter (32mm). Also measured the cowl's front diameter circle: 64mm. I drawed two concentric circles in MS Visio: 64mm and 38mm, cut these and glued on the cowl front as a guide. See:

I've continued with the cowl vent holes. Done some 'artistic' lines, and Dremelized them! Further sanding is required for painting...

After that, I've separated the cowl support stripes, and glued them on the F1 with epoxy. I also drawed a couple of lines at the bottom of the fuse and cut the hole for the muffler. Here's what I got, so far...

More pics. Here's the fuse.

I found that the OS .91FX is "extremely vibrator" for some people. As I don't have any experience with .61+ sized engines, I'll try to minimize the vibrations, in case the rumors are true.
I bought three different engine mounts, and I don't really like any of them (Dave Brown, Dubro and Great Planes adjustable). I will use the adjustable one, as it let me mount the engine closer to it's base. I want to do this in order to keep the beams as short as possible, altough a supplement is needed (~12mm).

Nice build.[sm=thumbs_up.gif]

I went to WalMart and bought a food chopping wood. You got it: 12mm hard wood!! I've used a circular saw to cut it down to the engine mount (+5mm per side), marked the holes and drilled them.
The pics show how it's done.

Comments of any kind are welcome!!!

Contratulations betatester! If you think you've been busy I've got news for you, the work is just starting! But in a few years you can teach her to fly. I had mine on a buddy box when he was 5.

Glad you got your stab issues resolved. I wouldn't have used the smaller one either. Your plane is looking good. I had no problems with the fiberglass on mine, I thought the quality was very high. Unfortunately I cracked one of my wheel pants loading in into the car yesterday.

I've got about a half dozen flights on it now and it's very impressive. I've moved the battery back from my starting position. I've got all the equipment exactly where shown in the instructions and the CG feels very good. There is still the slightest amount of pull in dives so I'm going to move it back some more. I'm thinking about adding a hatch on the bottom behind the wing

The plane flies very smoothly. I had to tone down the aileron throws, the recommend amount was very high. Knife edge is amazing. I have no mixing and it will hold knife edge across the field with no tendency to roll. Point rolls are fantastic! Landings have been very smooth and inverted requires just the slightest touch of down elevator.

I haven't seen any vibration problems with the OS .91. Mine is running very smoothly. I can't wait to get a few more flights on it so I can lean it out a little more.

Keep up the good work on the build thread and on the family.

For those who wrote asking for more pictures, here's a few more.

Dave

I run out of thin balsa sheets! Ouch!

I'm going to get some light thin balsa to build the muffler box roof and keep on going with the plane build. I want to get the engine mounted on it's place as soon as possible as I'm getting very delayed...

Dave, thanks for your replies; your Epsilon looks really, really great! Everybody says the same about the no-tendencies at the knife edge of this plane; I can't wait to fly my own. By the way, do you use linear rates on your radio? What do you recommend? I don't want to make 3D, I just wan this plane to introduce me in F3A... It will take years for me!


In the next post, I spect to have the muffler box roof done.

Congratulations on the little one. I hope you all are doing well.
Very nice build.
I am going to build the CA Epsilon 120 this winter.

A little progress: the engine's muffler box roof is done.
I've done a couple of balsa ribs, copynig the shape of the front cut of the firewall, in order keep the same curve along the box. Also glued two balsa sheets with ciano to get a piece large enogh to handle easily.
Here's the progress:

Sanding and finishing...

I've sanded the edges out and made a wedge to smoothly route the hot air outside the fuse. All this was done with 1mm balsa sheets, except for the reinforcement ribs, wich are made out of 2mm balsa sheets.

More pics:

Hey Betatester,

I think that was my favorite part. Building the muffler tunnel was fun. And it looks so cool. I just wish I had made the aft wall at about a 45 degree angle.

Linear rates? Goodness no, I use lots of exponential on everything I fly. Big throws for snaps but smooth in the center for cruising. I start out with 30 to 40 percent expo, work out the max throws I want, then play with the exponential until it feels right.

I'm still moving the CG back, it's really starting to wake up. I've got the battery right behind the wing now and the vertical dives are very close to dead on. With the changes it's starting to push just a little to the belly in knife edge. I'll probably more it aft a little more until verticals are exact and then use mixing to correct the push in KE.

I have lots more adjusting to do. I haven't gotten to fly since Monday. It's been raining and windy around here. Something about a hurricane hitting Texas. Luckily all we got was thunderstorms.

Dave

Some time has passed from my lst post. Here are the advances:

I've mounted the spacer wood (a pice of a food chopping dish from WalMart) between the firewall and the engine mount. Drilled the screw holes, and put them in their place. Also glued six pieces of pine wood to fix the cowl.
I've planned to use aluminun tubes to route the fuel and pressure lines through the firewall, and that's what i've done. Also applied one coat of PPG's ClearCoat to make the wood fuel proof.

Tank installation...

Using several strips os Scotch's double sided tape, I've applied two pieces of foam both to the tank support and to the top of the tank compartment. Also mounted the tank using Velcro strips.
Of course, the tank plumbing was previously done. I wanted to keep the hoses as short as they can be. I've also replaced the standard clunk by a filtered one, made of sintered brass.
Once this was done, I routed the throttle cable through the firewall and the tank compartment. This can be tricky, if you don't want to keep the throttle servo draining large current amounts.

Pics:

Some radio installation.
I'ts my first with pull-pull installation, so I'm curious. I plan to use a standard HiTec servo for the throttle and four JR's DS821 digital for the rest of the plane.
I've purchased a JR XP7202 radio for this plane. I's a synthesized one, and, as most of this plane, new for me. Also my first JR... really cute
The clevises and steel cables are DuBro/GreatPlanes. I can't say that I trust the clevises' thread. Not quite sure about keeping them... maybe a drop of locking compound convinces me in a future


Pics? —you got them!

More servo stuff...

I needed two cable extensions for the wing servos. As this is a ready to cover version, the wing comes pre-assembled, thus it's almost impossible to put a connector clip to avoid the connectors to split inside the wing. Have in mind that the hole through the wing are about 10mm dia. A simple workaround for this was to tie down both connectors with sewing thread.
The second challenge of this task was to get the servo cables through the wing. I've use the throttle steel cable, which is flexible, to pass a guide thread through. Done this, I've secured the servo extension cable with a knot and pulled it from the central wing hole. The first one comes relatively easily... the second was much harder, as the central hole was already partially closed.
OK, both servos mounted... also had to made four wood servo supports.

See:

Next I wanted to see how the cowl was going to be, once painted. To done this, I needed to make the carb intake, needle, filler valve and fuel check holes prior the the painting process.
I've used a special car putty to smooth out the wheel pants and the cowl, as they're all going to be painted. Once the putty was applied, sanded, washed, applied and sanded again, the surfaces are ready to be painted.
Just to keep things "tidy", I also wanted to paint the firewall and the muffler tunnel of the same color of the bottom of the fuselage.

Look:

The muffler tunnel was painted, as it was the firewall; of course the aluminum tubes where masked out. I forgot to note that the landing gear support area was reinforced using 45 min epoxy and fiberglass cloth.
I found that a simple and really effective method for preparing the epoxy mixture is to use standard syringes to measure the volume of the components. You can also mix the components into the syringe tube if the amount prepared is relatively small. I note this because this is the most stupid proof method to fill the hinge slots out of epoxy (you know why I call it stupid-proof! ). Quick and easy!!!
I've covered the top side of the fuse and painted the cabin floor of black. No pics for this yet, nor of the cowl, as it is wet right now .

See this:

The work continues...

I've painted the cabin floor and covered the fuse top, as I mentioned before. Also glued the stab in its place. To achieve this, I've put the wing and stab in their place; done this, I've measured the stab halves to be equally long at both sides of the fuse and the wing tips distances to the stab tips, to achieve surfaces paralelism. When thhe surfaces were aligned, I've applied some drops of CA to the stab/fuse junctions, just to fix it in place.
Then, I've cut a piece of fiber cloth to fit the internal stab top with some additional width (5mm per sede, approx) to glue it to the internal fuse sides. Painted it with epoxy, and this is the result:

More work last week...

The fuselage is completely covered. Not a easy one: the use of a sock over the iron is imperative if you don't want to hurt surfaces [:@]. I've mounted the cowl just for presentation. It's already painted; I've used Monokote paint to do so. Also are the wheel pants... forgot to take pics.
The engine was broken in last weekend. Next post will show more pics.

Here's the engine.

It ate 5l+ (1.3gal) of 0% fuel. It's really amazing how this beauty burns fuel! The carburettor was wide open at all times, but the mixture was set extremely rich; it even spitted fuel out through the venturi.

To tint or not to tint...

As nobody here has a method for tinting the cockpit (and I can't get Rit dye here[] ) I did figure out how to make the false plexiglass translucent, but not crystal clear as it comes from the factory. I've completely masked the exterior part, and applied a very thin coat of the same Monokote paint to the interior side. I wasn't any enthusiastic at all about doing this, but I really prefer a completely silver cockpit to a clear one, so I just needed to make a partial cover of paint, but a even one over all the interior surface.
The results surprised me. It looks really cool!

Here I am doing the work: