Servos arrived, so here we go again...
Two pieces of hard wood, and two pieces of balsa (the balsa is from a pre-shaped trailing edge piece).
These are the tow 9gram servos I will use.
I clamped the two balsa pieces together, and marked the places for the hardwood.
Balsa was removed to make room for the hardwood bars.
One servo tray.
With the servos screwed in, ready to be fit into the fuse.
Plug me in!
I still have this gaping hole in the firewall as air intake. Now is a good time as any to do something about this.
I made a lightweight balsa frame from 4mm by 1mm balsa strips.
And I "borrowed" some black gauze from my daughter's dressing up box. I put the frame upside down on the gauze
and dribbled thin CA on the balsa. Covered it with greaseproof paper, and weighted it down.
I cut the extra material of, then some alyphatic glue, and put inside the firewall.
Inside view.
Outside view.
The wheels
I'm going to attempt to make my own scale-ish wheels.
First I drew a circle on a sheet of 1mm ply,
and cut it out. I then sanded it into a nice round wheel shape.
3 more discs where cut out and together with the first one I fit them on a 2mm bolt, with a nut and some scrap
ply on either side. Then I clamped the nut onto my electric drill, and it was simply a matter of running the
drill and pressing a 80 grit sandpaper block against the discs to get equal sized wheels.
4 ply wheel discs.
I did the same with two 3mm balsa discs. So now there are 4 ply discs and two balsa ones.
Making two wheels consisting of a balsa disc sandwiched by two slightly larger ply discs.
Then I cut a length of brass tubing with an inside diameter of 2mm, and drilled out the holes for a fairly tight fit.
For extra safety, I dropped some thin CA around the holes.
I spread some alyphatic glue on either side of the balsa core, put it on the brass tube, and put a plate of ply
on either side. And again, you can never have too many clamps...
Even with all those clamps, I could see some areas where the wood didn't stay together, so after about 10 minutes
I took the brass tube out, and put a 1.5Ltr mineral water bottle on the wheel.
Rinse and repeat.
The next evening I had what looked like the beginning of two wheels
The next step would see me fiddling about with cardboard or stiff paper, folding and cutting, to make the fake linen
covered wheel spokes. I think I'll pass on that one. For the moment, my scale build abilities have their limits...
And after seeing a picture of another White Monoplane with GWS spider wheels, I feel I'm not doing too bad ;-).
So out came the can of red paint spray, very close to the red ultracote I am going to use. Two light passes
of the can, and here're the wheels in red.
I now glued two pieces of 1.5mm light-ply for each wheel.
Drilled a 2mm hole, and shaped & sanded them round.
The ingredients for my wheels.
Here I used epoxy to glue the parts together (after lightly sanding the brass tube).
After searching high, low, left, right and center, I could not locate a shop here that sold the kind of
tubing I need for the wheels. I did find one on the web, but they didn't sell international. Asking around on
RCGroups resulted in Vintage1 sending me some length of the required tubing. Thanks Vintage!
A piece was measured and cut.
And glued. Medium CA to glue the ends together, and thin CA around the rim.
Double vision...
There's no way on this earth I will be able to sew the main axle to the fuse, So I went the ARF style way.
First I could myself two pieces of plastic from a long forgotten bathroom project.
Rounded them nicely.
And drilled some holes.
A test fit showed that the axle has too much room to wiggle about.
So a line was drawn, and marked with tape.
Then, with a dremmel, I made a groove in the 4mm LG plate.
Next step; the LG side bars. I cut two pieces of 2mm pushrod to size and taped them together. This way all bends are equal.
See? Ready for assembly.
This bit I've been dreading: covering.
One wing covered, using only the iron.
And after carefull use of the heat gun.
And two of them.
That went so well, I moved on to the elevator and horizontal stab.
First I cut the elevator free, and sanded a 45* bevel in the LE. I found a simple way to get an even 45* bevel.
Tape the surface to the building board's edge.
Mark the 45* line. On larger, flat surfaces I would tape a metal ruler instead of drawing a line.
Then just sand away.
And cover.
And to finish of the evening, the rudder.
Before covering the fuse I want to get the rest of the innards done. So first I attached the motor with 2 screws onto
the firewall, plugged in the ESC, and with hook & loop fasteners stuck the ESC to the sidewall.
A 1.5mm balsa plate will serve as battery tray.
But before anything else, some balsa re-enforcements.
Then a piece of hook&loop threaded through two slits.
A strip of "hook" on the plate, and a strip of "loop" on the battery. And a strap of hook&loop for security.
It works!
Ca'd inside...
Started covering the fuse. Would you believe it? I ran out of red Oracover!
I'll have to get some more red Oracover for the box. Meanwhile I did some decorating. A big blue stripe on
the bottom of the all white wing should help visibility. The cut out number five is just for fun. And to indicate
what model number on my Tx to dial in...
Got some more red Oracover, so I finished that bit. Treated the tail with a whiff of my heatgun, and most
wrinkles are gone. Then some Monokote silver Decostrip. Looking good...
And the piece of resistance; former N, wood stained and all.
Since all real building is done now, I moved over to assembly.
First the wings. All covering was cut away (carefully) where glue had to be applied. ie. the wing
roots and the side of the fuse box. Then a swipe with a hot covering iron to make sure the covering that
had loosened up a bit while cutting away, would not work itself further lose. Then another swipe, this time with some alcohol.
As per instructions, I put the fuse on a flat surface and propped up the tail till the top of the fuse was
paralel with the work surface. Then I test fitted a wing half and measured the distance from the bottom of the
wingroot to the work surface. I added 3/4" to that (which was 13mm) and propped up the wing till the underside
of the wing tip reached 13mm above the worksurface. I mixed some 30 minute epoxy, applied some to both
wingroot and fuse box, and pressed them together. With the wing propped up there was no need for further
pressure to keep it all in place. 40 minutes later I repeated the procedure with the other wing.
Once both wings were done I mixed another small batch of 30 minute epoxy and spread a small amount on
the main and rear spars inside the fuse, where the ends meet.
The horizontal stab was a bit more tricky. First I had to measure the LE and find the exact middle.
Then I meassured the width of the fuse's tail just behind the hole for the rudder post, which is where
the stab's LE will be. The width of the fuse was 2cm there, so on the stab I had to measure 1cm on either side
of the mark, to get the correct amount of covering to be removed. Another test fit showed me how far back to
remove the covering on the stab. Once the appropriate amount of covering was removed from both the stab and the
fuse, also here I did a swipe with the iron and then alcohol. And glued the stab in place with 30 minute epoxy.
I weighted it down with some lead. While curing, I measured the distance from stab tip to wing tp, making sure both sides where equal.
Opening up the fuse for the pull/pull wires for the rudder was easy. A touch with my hot soldering iron
did the job in seconds.
Same procedure for the pushrod exit for the elevator.
Then I made an opening in the elevator for the control horn. Obviously after trial fitting to make
sure the horn got in the right place. (An added "bonus" to this test fitting was that I realised that the
elevator servo should've been on the other side.)
An elevator pushrod was fabricated from a 2mm carbon fiber rod and some 1.5mm piano wire. Wrapped with dental
floss and thin CA. After that some heatshrink.
Elevator in place.
If you look carefully, you can just make out the Dubro pull-pull wires. It's a great little set (of Dubro)
but does take some planning. Especially in the limited space I allowed myself inside the fuse....
And the inards.
And now the continuing saga of the landing gear:
Figuring out the middle of the axle.
As I couldn't find any washers the right size, I used tiny bolts. The extra weight is offset by the fact
that I accidently use a 2mm rod as axle, instead of a 3mm rod...
I've fixed the bolts in place with a drop of epoxy on the outside.
Then I fixed the axel horizontal,
placed a wheel on the bolt,
a smidgeon of vaseline on the wheel,
a few layers of greaseproof paper (so the epoxy won't attach to places it shouldn't, and to create
a small gap between the bolt and the wheel),
and on top of that another tiny bolt and a drop of epoxy. I don't have a picture of that, but here's the end result.
Rinse and repeat.
I couldn't find the proper one strand copperwire, so after some consultations on RCGroups I decided to use
multistrand copper wire. I tinned one end of wire before stripping.
And then seperated one group of strands.
Cut of, tinned the other end (to prevent unravelling), and wound around the axel and vertical post.
And tinned with solder.
Once both sides were done I found the pre-drilled holes in the fuse and inserted the vertical posts. Then it was simple to press the axel in place, and screw in the plastic covers I had made.
Looks just like the picture in the magazine!
Now it was time to insert the tail strut. Oops, forgot to make an opening for that one. So some carefull cutting,
filing and sanding was done to get an opening in the tail plate. Then I epoxied the strut in place. Sorry, no
pictures of this. You'll have to use your imagination...
The final steps: wingstruts.
I got some dowels from the hardware store (at half the price from the LHS) and gave them a quick lick of varnish.
I used dental floss to bind a short end of piano wire to the dowel and fixed it with medium CA. Then I bend the wire
somewhat, to make a proper fit so the dowel points to the bottom of the fuse. Distance was measured, and the dowel was cut to size.
Another piece of pianowire was attached, so the strut fits in place. Then another dowel was fixed with
piano wire, and cut to size to fit against the root of the front strut. A small dab of medium CA to fix
the dowels together, and then I removed the two struts, so I could bind the roots together with the now
familiar dental floss and medium CA.
The end result.
All three points of the struts on each side have a dab of epoxy, to keep it all in place, although the struts are not carrying.
Time to drool...
