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| Raptor in Long Ranger, Page 3 |
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| The landing gear is almost done. I soldered some brass channel as a step on each side after grinding the channel to fit the radius of the strut nicely. I primered it to prevent corrosion, but still have to add plates to the front tips of the skids to get rid of the ugly hole.... The gear will be secured to the bottom of the fuse using socket head cap screws through plastic spacers. |
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| Click a thumbnail to see larger picture! |
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| The plastic spacers used to support the landing gear are 1/4" long by 3/8" round and were purchased from the local hardware store. I used my Dremel tool with 3/8" sanding drum to create the half-round saddle for the gear to sit in. The gear is attached with 6-32 screws and lock nuts. |
| Here the heli is assembled to check fit of everything. I think I'm ready to prime and paint! (As soon as I cut the cooling hole!) |
| Probably the only potential problem of the whole project is the starting shaft access. If I grind the access hole any more forward, I'll start cutting into the vertical part of the fuse, which may weaken that area too much. As is, I have to angle my starter toward the head to get the wand in the hex hole. It'll work, but might be ugly if the starter wand starts shaking! |
| I have yet to cut out the cooling hole in the bottom of the fuse. My OS .50 is on backorder from CyberHeli, and I'd like to have it in the frames to determine the size and shape of the cooling hole. I might just use my OS .32 Raptor as a guide and cut the hole so I can get on with priming.... |
| This pic shows the two screws I installed at the top of the fuse halves. The instructions use dowel pins about an inch lower than these screws to align the fuse halves from about the window line up. I felt this was not adequate, so I mounted a couple of ply pads for the screws to bite into at the uppermost part of the fuse halves, and used socket head #2 x 1/2" wood screws to do the job. It works well, and keeps the two halves securely fastened.... |
| I'm thinking of finishing the heli in the scheme of the CHP Long Rangers. To see what they look like, here's a few pics: |
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| January 1, 2001 I'm in the process of priming and filling all the pinholes on the fuse. As usual, priming exposes a lot of pinholes that you can't see normally. Most of the pinholes are along the seam lines, and along edges and areas thick with resin. I'm using Nitro-Stan to fill all the blems, then wet-sanding until smooth. Following a finish coat of primer, I plan to practice making glue rivets and panel lines to prepare for my Vario Jet Ranger, which I hope to make more of a contest quality scale machine. After application of the details, I'll shoot the colors. I haven't done anything worthy of pictures, but if anyone wants to see the primer/fill process, shoot me an email and I'll post pics here. The finishing process is slow-going due to the cool weather here in Northern CA, so I'm at the mercy of the weather gods as to how long it will take to complete the painting process.... |
| The painting process begins on page 4! |