Bristol County Radio Control Club Forum

Did a quick alignment of the ply wing saddle pieces and the formers. Cut out clearance for the flap linkage. Epoxied the F2A ply piece to the F13 ply firewall. Will epoxy the firewall in when it's dry. Instructions have you do it in reverse. I thought it would be easier to put it in as an assembly.

Sheeted the stab and fin then started setting up the tail wheel linkage before I move any farther on the strips and planking of the fuse. I'm running the rudder like the elevator so all will be internal. I used a small tail wheel control horn I had and it was perfect for this application. Ran a piece of brass tubing inside the tail wheel wire block to make it a better bearing.
This kit builds with a fair amount of distance with the bottom of the TW wire unsupported outside and below the block. At the bottom of the block is where my control horn is mounted then I glued another small piece of hardwood along the bottom 1/4 stringer with another piece of brass tubing for a lower bearing support. With the block in place, there is a fair amount of fitting and cutting of the rear of the stab to get the stab to sit down on the saddle. The TW wheel wire also comes up through the bottom of the fin bottom post so it's all got to be set up so it will work and also so it can be assembled.
I offset the elevator horn somewhat which allowed me to have clearance for both pushrods to work (elevator/rudder) I used a long length of wire at the end of the elevator pushrod and a Z bend to connect it to the elevator horn.

With all the tail appendages in clamped and place and all linkages installed I started to finish up the adding the strip wood to the formers.

Worked on the rudder hinges. Lined up the hinge line per the plans and all seems to work well with the slight deflection of the lower leading edge of the rudder. All starting to come together now. Need to start rounding edges of the appendages and sheet the lower fuse now.

Sheeted the bottom of the fuse per the instruction. Put in the saddle sheeting also. Installed my servo rails and servos. Hooked up the push rods and checked all. Put the wing and tail feathers on to have a look. Also stuck the cowl on. Thinking I might build the upper deck out of balsa rather than use the plastic. Haven't decided as of yet.

Did a little work today. I trimmed and fitted the front deck and now I've decided to go with it. I was able to get it fitted well and like the results. I found that the front lined up well, the back was not level with the cockpit bulkhead. I added a 5/32 piece of balsa to the plastic upper deck rear then sanded it down level with the cockpit bulkhead. Fitted the wing, checked alignment, and then drilled F22 for the mounting bolts. I used two nylon 1/4 x 20 socket head screws to mount the wing. Using these allows the heads of the bolts to be inside the holes of the middle flap so the flap closes with no issue.

Put the gear down and set it down on my cleaned bench (thank god, it needed a cleaning up!). Leveled the wing bottom and then started checking the fuse. Like Mike, I found I have a slight twist to the fuse but nothing that can't be overcome pretty easily. It is less than 3/32 over the entire length. I suspected this with the wing bolted snug, there is more space on the right side of the saddle up by the leading edge than the left. This really shouldn't post a problem with some sanding of the saddle. A little sanding on the stab saddle and all will be straight and level all the way through.

Finished squaring off the wing and leveling all the flight surfaces. I had to sand some areas of the wing saddle some and realized the sheeting over the main spar was high leaving a hump and causing the wing not to sit down on the saddle correctly so the sheeting got sanded to an nice airfoil without the hump! LOL

Once the wing dowel plate was epoxied in place, I bolted the wing up and started checking the level of the wing bottom section, cockpit rails, and stab saddle. A little sanding was necessary on the stab saddle but all leveled out.

I mounted the engine and then moved the throttle servo from the back rails to the side of ply wing saddle in the first bay. A short 5" pushrod connects the servo to the throttle arm. Of course, when I went to remove the motor to start on the balsa cowl ring, I realized that I installed the motor mount centered on the horizontal when I needed to mount the engine rails on the center. So I had to redrill the holes by 2/10 of an inch.

Put the 1/2 balsa pieces all around the front of the fuse and sanded it down even with the sides then rounded the leading edge. Got out my 2" sanding drum on the drill and smoothed out the inside of all the balsa pieces. Once I was happy with the shape I cut with a razor saw the width of the maple blocks and epoxied them to the ply firewall. I will shape them and narrow them where they show but preferred having a wider mount than a narrow one.

Cut out the canopies and found that while the instructions have you sand the top sheeting flat with the rear bulkhead, they don't tell til later in the instructions that you need to put sheeting back in the rear corners for the rear canopy to fit with balsa underneath in. So I added those pieces and rounded them out.

Got more done today on the cowl. I drew lines where the back of the cowl should be on the blocks and using the Dremel router, cut down the thickness of the cowl on each block. I lined the cowl up at the top and drilled/screwed one screw in to hold cowl. I then checked the roundness of the cowl to the fuse and drilled the remaining holes so all around the cowl lines up with the fuse side profile.
Put the engine back and cut the hole for the engine head. I'll be using a remote glow for this as the glow plug ends up real close to the bottom cowl mount. Cut out the plastic belly pan and started trimming a little at a time. I ended up adding 3/16 of balsa to the front of the wings leading edge to get the plastic back enough where it belonged. With everything in place there will be a need for a very little amount of body filler to make all fit correctly. Actually pretty impressed with the fit of the plastic.

Got all the tail surfaces rounded off and hinged. I put together the plastic tail cone and did not like it one bit. It doesn't fit anything like the upper deck or belly pan so I decided to got the wood route. Glued up some pieces to make it hollow and made up some wood fillets from the cone to the elevators. Shaped the fill in pieces that go on the the top of the stab and fin area. Tail area just about done now until assembly. Going to glass the stab and fin separately before assembly also.