Peter Jenkins

Handyman, I fail to see where HASW has any impact on our hobby. I'm not quite sure who you have in mind for your comment "Then suddenly, out of the depths emerged the unelected spectre of Bureaucracy." If you mean the Government, then you and I elect them. If you mean the BMFA, again, you and I elect them - if there is more than one candidate for one of the Executive posts and your Club elects its Area representative on Council. So, to whom are you addressing this point? The BMFA has always been at pains to point out that the Achievement Scheme is just that - an achievement. It is not, and has never been a licence. That being said, Clubs, whose committees are elected by members, tend to use the competency to fly solo as the BMFA A test. Some also seek a B Certificate if members wish to fly a jet or an aircraft that weighs more that 7 Kg. Again, this is not a BMFA requirement. There is a recommendation that all pilots flying in front of the public should have a B Certificate but I suspect that most Display Directors would want to know a bit about the pilot and their competency than just "I have a B". I have seen some pilots who hold a B certificate fly and they would struggle to pass the A as they have not kept their skills current. The reason why the BMFA encourages Areas to run Achievement Scheme Workshops is to help Examiners as well as instructors and candidates to come up to date with what is standard for a pass in both the A and B tests. I have seen Examiners demand that candidates fly the Fig 8 with a 45 deg cross over when this requirement was replaced with two touching circles in 2010 for the A and has never been there for the B. If you are to have a national standard such as the BMFA Achievement Scheme surely it is only common sense for all partaking in the scheme to know what is the standard required for a pass? Otherwise, you will get overly strict and overly lenient standards between Clubs and that is not a good thing. For example, an ACE told me that his view of the B was that it was all about safety and flying skill was secondary so if the candidate did not loop directly in front of the pilot position he was OK with that. Same for the 2 rolls, he didn't think the needed to be centred. If you have that interpretation of a B how can you be sure that the holder of a B passed by such an examiner is able to put his aircraft where it needs to be and not where the aircraft and wind takes it? As an Examiner, I practise the B schedule on a number of occasions in the year. This is so that I can demonstrate the B to a candidate and know that I can fly it to the required standard - or where I don't, to tell the candidate what I did wrong. I fail to see why providing these Workshops is such a big issue for you Handyman. When you talk about extra burdens on Examiner and Instructors are, what are they? I would expect all Examiners and Instructors to be aware of the need to download and read the Guidance Notes on the various A, B and C tests. However, I know that some Examiners can't be bothered to do this simple thing (you can also ask the office to post you hard copy if you don't use the internet). If you don't read the latest guidance notes, which are updated every year now, and you don't go to any workshops how can you examine candidates fairly? The BMFA rules are not legislation. That is down to the government, or rather in the case of drones, to the European Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) and the BMFA has been doing a sterling job to keep the impact as low as possible. I think that, so far, they have done marvellously well although we will need to see what legislation the government enact towards the end of 2019. I look forward to reading your response.

Would have been better if they had left then undrilled. Mind you, drilling the holes in the right place ain't a piece of cake either.

Thanks Jim. The 75 I flew really impressed me and I hope this one lives up to it.

Just to clarify, the AS Roadshows to which Duncan refers are the ones run by the ASRC and not the ones run by Areas in this first iteration. He says that he will consider extending this to Area run events next year. I think this will significantly reduce the number of Examiners reached as they will need to make one of the 2 Roadshows in 2019. Fingers crossed that Phase 2 comes along in 2020.

Good solution. I've never liked choke rods coming out of the front of the cowl - don't know why though!

Thanks Ron, so am I!

I don't think Battersby were still making RAF Officers hats in 1969. Bates, Alkit, Burton (I think) and one other, whose name escapes me, were the only suppliers then AFAIK.

Looking good!

Finding a civil pilot figure that would look about right took some searching but I eventually settled on an existing pilot figure after cutting it down to fit under the canopy. I painted the cockpit area black. When tidying up the shed, I found the round balsa plug that I had cut out for the carb intake and that fitted the need for a head pad for the pilot! Suitably painted it allowed the pilot’s head to be glued to the head rest. A search of my “Instrument Panel” folder did not produce an aerobatic instrument panel so I settled for a standard panel and just cut off the top 3 instruments It would have been nice to have included a G meter but, hey, this is a Gangster! The next job will be to trim the canopy to fit and glue that in place using Canopy Glue (aka craft glue) once all the paint is dry and the pilot glued in place. The task I’d been dreading now reared its head. I had to drill and tap the engine backplate to take the pressure nipple. As it happened, it was childs play and the whole job took less than 10 minutes to complete. Next up was to fit the tank in place. I fitted the feed and vent pipes and used some anti slip material under the tank and between the Velcro straps and tank before tightening up the Velcro straps. I fitted the Dubro filler valve and connected up the tank feed and the engine feed. That in turn was fitted to the pump input and the pump bolted into place. And that brings the build blog up to date. I’m still hoping to have this complete by the end of Jan 2019!

My next task was to glue to tailplane into position. (Before doing this, I covered the part of the fuselage under the tailplane as I thought this might be easier to do without the tailplane in position.) The wing needs to be in place so that I could measure from the datum points on the wing to datum points on the tailplane to ensure that the tailplane was square. I also double checked that the tailplane was parallel to the wing when viewed from behind. Unfortunately, my 30 min epoxy had hardened so with some trepidation I used 12 min epoxy but that worked fine giving adequate time to check alignment. The next step was to glue the fin into position ensuring that it was at right angles to the tailplane. I used a tri square for this and then pinned the rudder to the tailplane and rudder post till the epoxy had cured. Finally, I glued the fairing blocks in place. And so onto covering the fuselage. I started at the rear and worked my way forwards always having the overlap of any covering facing aft. I found this the most fiddly bit of the entire build. I completed this in one day and it took me 8 hours to accomplish! I have to say I was totally cream crackered at the end. The final task was to fit the tailwheel assembly back on and hinge the rudder using Robart hinges with Gorilla glue. Edited By Peter Jenkins on 26/01/2019 23:31:14

I had been debating for many months on what sort of colour scheme to use to finish the Gangster. Eventually, I cribbed a design that had been on my 2 mtr Vanquish using, yellow, red, blue and white for the top surfaces and black and white on the undersurfaces of the wing and tailplane and yellow on the underneath of the fuselage. I started with the wing. The pattern was to be quartered black and white. Rather than cover the whole wing in white and the put black on it I decided to cover sections with a small overlap. As this was the first time I had done a complete model with film covering (lots done with tissue or nylon and dope followed by coloured dope) there was an element of learning on the job. I had bought a Hangar 9 covering glove that proved great for smoothing the film down while using a hot air gun. However, I first used Balsa Loc at all the joining areas and this proved to be an error as it caused a fair amount of wrinkling. In order to ensure that all joins were facing away from the oncoming airflow, I covered from the back to the front. I dispensed with the Balsa Loc on the second wing panel and the results were better. So, here’s the underside. The top required curves and straight lines. After a great deal of experimenting with plates and oval platters, I finally settled on 2 metal oval dishes as my patterns. I marked the edge of the platter with a black marker to give the same shape on each subsequent bit of coloured film. It wasn’t perfect but it looks OK if you don’t stand too close! Having covered the wing, I then covered the ailerons and then hinged them using Gorilla Glue. Finally, I fitted the undercarriage, screwed on the retaining plates and fitted the wheels. I then covered the tailplane and elevators leaving the area to be glued to the fuselage bare. I hinged the elevators using Gorilla glue Gangster 57 / 58

At this stage, I debated whether it would be easier to cover all the major assemblies before gluing the tailplane and rudder in place and decided that would be the way I’d go. One final part was needed though and that was the construction of the fairing blocks to be fitted either side of the fin and glued to the fuselage and tailplane. It became apparent at this stage why that former at the back end of the fuselage had required packing! The supplied fairing blocks were too small! It was now clear that I should have bent the side fuselage pieces to glue them to the smaller former! I fabricated some larger blocks and planed and sanded them to the required shape. I also finalised the fitment of the tailwheel. I had a much nicer tailwheel than the one supplied in the kit so used that instead. I also decided to mount it on a piece of ply so cut a short piece of the balsa fuselage bottom off and replaced it with some ply. That gave a good strong structure for the retaining wood screws. Incidentally, I used the socket headed servo screws that Model Fixings sell. Shaping the fuselage top decking, bottom decking and the cowling was my next task. You can see in this photo that this resulted in some parts of the cowling being completely sanded away! I had to add additional scrap wood to the structure to fill these gaps plus a bit of light weight filler where it was too awkward to add additional wood.

I had obtained an aluminium manifold when I bought the ST90 so now I was able to bolt it on and check alignment with the tuned pipe. Well, as the photo shows, it was aligned horizontally but not vertically! A call to Just Engines for a new manifold elicited the response that it looked like one of their manifolds and why didn’t I use the bar soap method to anneal the aluminium and carefully bend it upwards. After establishing what the bar soap method was (use a bar of soap to rub over the aluminium and heat with a blow torch until the soap goes black! Easy when you know how) I followed their advice and the outcome was this. So, many thanks to Andrew at JE for doing himself out of an order and helping me to learn a new skill. Next up was to drill the u/c blocks and fit the undercarriage to check all was well. It was, so I glued on the plywood blocks on the top of the wing and drilled through them using the u/c blocks to guide the drill. Next up was to test hinge the ailerons. I was using Robart pin hinges and for the ailerons these required to be top hinged. So, taking a deep breath, I drilled 4 holes at a suitable angle in each wing. I offered up each aileron to their respective wings and marked the drilling position and then drilled those. This shows the aileron dry hinged. I was leaving the hingeing until after covering the wing and ailerons.

At this stage, I found that the desired 1.5 deg right side thrust had disappeared! I found a one piece engine mount in my bitsa drawer that fitted the bill and would be easier to place than the 2 piece alloy one supplied. So, I carefully marked up the engine mount bolt holes to allow the spinner to be on the centre line with the 1.5 deg right side thrust. Trigonometry again supplied the thickness of the ply packing needed to achieve the 1.5 deg right side thrust. I then fitted 4 T nuts and glued them in place. With the engine mount in place, I offered up the engine and using the cowl balsa blocks positioned the engine as far forward as possible. I used my Dead Centre to mark the engine mounting holes. This was limited to the rear bolt holes as the mount already had 4 holes! Sadly, the front holes were not in quite the right place so needed to be relieved although I was able to drill the 2 new holes for the rear bolts in the right place! This engine mount also provided a convenient way to mount the Perry pump and keep it close to the engine. At least with a pump, the tank position did not need to be exactly aligned with the needle valve position. Having bolted the engine in place, I was able to finalise how I was going to make and fit the cowling so that I could access the engine mounting bolts. After some head scratching, I decided to cut both the top and bottom sheets at the engine bulkhead. I decided to glue to top sheet in place with the bottom sheet, giving access to the old tank bay and the throttle servo (and possibly the Rx battery) would be held in place by long servo screws. I glued some hard square strip to the sides of this hatch to locate it laterally and longitudinally. The servo screws would go through the 2 ply bulkheads into the square strip. I also used the full length front fuselage bottom sheet to get the cylinder and carb holes cut. I used a hole cutter to do this. I then mocked up the full set of cowling blocks to check that all would be well before committing to cut anything. I like the Dubro single point filling valve so, once the tank plumbing route was defined, I was able to position the tank filling point hole. As the fuselage side was too thick to allow the valve to be fitted at this point, fuselage side and doubler at this point, I cut a clearance hole to fit a hard balsa oblong that would allow the valve to be bolted in place.

Having opted for an inverted, rather than side mounted, engine, the suggestion by Mick Reeves on using the top decking for access to the tank and for engine mounting access was no longer sensible. I had also decided to use a tuned pipe with the Super Tigre 90 and had acquired a Hanno Pipe. The space for the tank now began to give me pause for thought. I emailed Mike Wilshere (Motors & Rotors and the importer of ST engines) for advice on the size of tank for a pipe equipped ST90 if I wanted 14-15 mins of flight time. He suggested a minimum of 16 ozs. That meant the tank bay was too small for the required tank. As an aerobatic aircraft the obvious place to fit this large tank was on the CG. If I relocated the engine servo to the old tank bay I would just have to accommodate the Rx and the battery in the main equipment bay in the wing cutout – remember that the elevator and rudder servo were in the rear fuselage. I could also move the Rx battery into the old tank bay if the CG ended up too far aft. So, a Dubro 18 oz tank was obtained (they don’t do a 16 oz one) and I decided to use Velcro straps to retain it in position. This would also allow the tank to be shuffled around a bit if required to get the tank CG right onto the aircraft’s no fuel CG. However, in order to get the tank into the fuselage I needed to cut out one of the fuselage formers that divided the space above the wing. Thank goodness for Japanese pull saws. They can cut flush and is just the thing for this task! My Permagrit sanding block completed the task. Of course, that then triggered the thought that I ought to have a pump to cope with the tank being so far back. As luck would have it, I found I had just the thing – a 2 stroke Perry pump – in one of my bitsa drawers. The pump required plumbing to the engine crankcase to allow the pump diaphragm to oscillate and thus pump the fuel. As a US product, I needed an imperial drill and tap and once again Model Fixings came up with the goods. I’m putting off drilling and tapping the engine back plate for as long as possible!

Ah but rattles from cables can excite the fuselage side and get amplified Ron! Every little noise generator is worth looking at if the 82 db noise level is to be achieved.

Correct Percy, but it also eases the problem of passing the leads down the fuselage. I did make a rolled paper tube out of a sheet of A4 paper but the leads made a bit of a noise rattling around in there, so a trip to the plumbers supplier got me enough of this stuff to last my lifetime!