Martyn K

Love the pilot Colin and cracking job on the spinner, which has made me realise I need to add that job to my list..

A bit more progress. Wirk on the Robin DR400 temporarily suspended while i was waiting for paint which has just arrived. I have 3 big tasks outstanding. Wheels, wing rigging and detail. As i have damaged my bacj, i thought that o would work on tje detail. I purchased a highly detailed 3d printable ww2 pilot. Actually a spitfire pilot but dont tell anyone please. I printed slowly to get the best resolution. The file blurb said approx 1/6 scale and 40 hours of printing later i had a very nice pilot about 10% too big. So scaled down to 84% and 35 hours later it fitted perfectly in the cockpit but just a little too tall. a bit ghostly. Needs to be reincarnated. While i was printing for almost 3 solid days, i started on the gunsights and windscreen. Mmm another upside piccie. Sorry, it looks ok on the phone. The long sight was made from a length of plastic tube with lith strips wrapped around as appropriate. Held in place with pins padded out slightly with ali tube. The cross hair gun sight was 3d printed. Took an hour to cad it and 10 minutes to print it. Nice and flexible, it should survive ok. The windscreen base is balsa then added a PETG plastic windscreen and lith frames. I would be pleased with it if it hadn't clouded slightly when i wiped off the excess epoxy using acetone. Hopefully, I'll be able to polish it out. Reincarnating the pilot with paint took about 3 days but i am quite pleased with the outcome. Paint still a bit wet here but when dry, he slotted straight in and felt quite at home. He is a tight fit.., (just spotted that i need to trim the lith on that lower frame..) Hand on the joystick.. Just. The other big job was to fit the underfus radiator housing. The mesh came from an old sieve and the slats are from balsa. I had previously spent a great deal of time adding all the distinct rivets and other fasteners. Its held in place by a slide at the rear and 4 10mm neo magnets at the front. I need to be able to slide it off to get the lower wing centre panel off. And Far too clean. Needs weathering. Next job. Wing struts and rigging. Thanks to Danny i have ordered some neoprene cord for the tyres. May have to remake the wheels though.. Real progress. More to come..

4 weeks holiday in France slowed things up a bit then last week, i fell and fractured a bone in my back. However i have been working on the Fury in parallel with the Robin. Mainly working on scale detail although the fin and rudder are now fixed in place. I used a cf tube for the rudder post. This area needs tidying up a bit yet. The fin stands off the tailplane as per full size. The front post is just a steady, pushes into a hole in the tailplane. I have tried to replicate the hinges. These are made from gf sheet and are similar to the original but the air gap is slightly too wide. Fairly pleased with them though. Being laid up allowed me to do some cad work and a pair of mark IV Vickers barrels and cooling vents have been crafted. 3D printed and sprayed satin black. The cooling slots aren't quite correct, I may redo them. The joystick was made from a mix of plasic tube, ali tube , rubber tube, black sleeving and button thread binding. Enjoyed making this. Note how the rubber split just after it was all glued togerher. Sigh. The thread binding went on afterwards and mainly hid the split. Instrument console was laser cut. The Vickers breeches are balsa with a 3d printed arming? lever glued to the side. Brake, elevator trim wheel and throttle & mixture controls are also 3d printed. The pilots seat is balsa. All in, a real mix of build technologies. A couple more instruments yet to be added but its getting there. Sorry these are upside down. The coaming came from a strap of an old handbag. It already had padding inside. Quite pleased with that. Need to sort out a pilot next and then crack on with struts and rigging More to come

On holiday for the past 4 weeks so nothing done for well over a month. Hiwever, I did get a few hours of solitary confinement in the workshop today. As i have removed the 'cockpit floor' from the moulding, i have replaced this with 4 of 6mm sq spruce longerons terminating in a taper about 100mm behind the cockpit area. A 2mm lite ply floor then glued to tje lower longerons just above the wing root Rudder and elevator standard mg bb servos added supported in an additional 3mm lite ply servo tray and the all flying tailplane connected up. The throttle linkage also fitted along with the fuel tank. The throttle servo is a 9gm bb mg servo secured on a foam pad. It should be ok but I'll keep an eye on it. The r/e servos will sit under the rear seats so should be invisible when complete. Next to fit the noseleg and shroud This was a real faff, mainly because there was no drill mark at the top for the uc leg to fit through so an educated guess and careful adjustment. At least its all out of sight. The method of securing the shroud to the leg is quite neat. Uses a custom arm/axle that could be fairly easily replicated. Two screws hold it to the shroud and a flat on the leg locks the axle securely. With the cowl pushed on, its starting to look quite Robin like The fuel tank sits laterally across the fus, held in a ply cradle with elastic bands. I'll do a test engine run and if ok try and find something more permanent to hold it. Next job is to shape and fit and connect the rudder then start work on the interior. The steerable nose leg will slso need connecting up. I also need to find a home for the rx, battery and power switch. Really enjoying this and pleased with the progress. 🙂 More to come..

They both look squiggly to me but then that may be my eyesight.. 😄

That looks great Danny. THanks

I bit the bullet last night and cut the cowl. The good news is that I didn't need to take quite so much material out. From underneath it's not hugely noticeable And from the side its almost invisible. So with that out of the way, the firewall was drilled and captive T nuts fitted and the engine mounted. The engine is very slightly too low so I need to trim/sand a modicum off the rear lower of the cowl to tilt it down slightly. Also need to check the fuel tank level as it was originally intended for a side mounted engine. It may need to be lowered somehow. Not very straightforward on this model.

Where did the pilot come from Danny?

Back following again Colin... Looking forward to see how it develops..

Started work on the front end. The moulding needed copious quantities of fibre glass removing. I have taken out more than the instruction specified. The model had a dummy floor and a remaining partition behind the pilots which has now gone. That in addition to opening up the cowl air intakes was quite a time consuming exercise and i was glad when it was over. I'll need to add a bit of stiffness to compensate for the gf that has been removed. More to come on that when I have thought about it.. And I do like that cowl shape. There are two engine bulkheads. A 3mm ply former that sits inside and a 6mm ply engine mount bulkhead mounted on rubber standoffs. A very nice touch, shame that its not seem more often. The inner former has ply fuel tank mounts to support the supplied circular clunk fuel tank that is fitted laterally. A bonus is that all the mounting holes are clearly marked on the fus so were easy to drill. So, a couple of coats of fuel proofer and allowed to dry and the joy of trying to mount the engine. Rear former fitted no problem but using m4 nyloc nuts to support the mounts rather than the plain nuts supplied. The front former temporary fitted while I had a think about lining up the engine accurately. I rather hoped that it would fit angled slightly downwards but first I had to mark the former for the engine mount. No template for this, so this was my approach. Model on the bench and aligned so the former was vertical. Fit the cowl and measure to the centre of the prop driver hole. Transfer that back to the former and draw a horizontal line. The former is nicely centred so that was easy to get the vertical centre. Fortunately, i am using a circular nylon mount so i can use the notches to centre the mount. Draw around the mount. I can now simply rotate the engine and mount knowing the prop driver is still central. Mount held in place with a single woodscrew and test fitted the cowl, which didn't fit. Tried several angles but the os70fs was binding. As a last resort, I tried the engine inverted and amazingly it fitted almost perfectly with the cylinder head sat in the lower air intake. That almost just stops the cowl from sitting perfectly. I can force it in place but that is just a recipe for a cracked cowl so I will need to remove some of the cowling from underneath the air intake. Remember the engine is rubber mounted so I will need to leave space for wobbles as well.. The black line shows roughly how much i will need to remove. So , the question is, fellow forumites, do I get the dremel out or do i take a bow to the gods of electrickery? More to come..

It will also have struts and rigging as well 😂

A bit of progress on the Fury It was originally going to be silver and i have used scale like litho panels all the way down the fus. Until i got to the nose. I just could not get those compound curves to look right. In fact, they were horrible. So after numerous attempts, i abandoned that scheme and went for 217/M of the SAAF which was stationed in Ethiopia between 1940 until 1944 when it was eventually destroyed. This aircraft saw action against the Italians, one of only a handful of Furys that saw action in WW2 in RAF colours. Lots more to come but some real progress after a very prolonged house move.. PS I know the camo scheme isnt correct but I can blame that on duff info on the Internet ...

I do the same on my classic aerobatic models to stop pushrods from flexing.. Very reassuring for very little additional weight. A bit of progress on the elevator. The joiner reinforced with 2mm diameter piano wire.! Glass Fibre Horn built (90 degrees) and locked with a sandwich of a 4mm internal diameter aluminium tube all held at 90 degrees with short lengths of dowelling. The tricky bit was marking and drilling the holes. Fortunately the fus has a flat base and the sides are upright so carefully marked and drilled wth a 2mm drill the main pivot. Put a length of wire through and checked it was horizontal, it wasn't so adjusted the hole with a needle file, opened out to 3mm, try again and tweaked again, then opened out to 4mm. It seems ok. With the main pivot in place, marked the rear joiner position and carefully cut the slots to allow the tailplane to go up and down. It still needs a bit more down but there is about 5 degrees up at the moment. It looks about right. With those bits done, i glued an m4 washer to each side of the fus to act as a bearing and a spacer to stop the tailplane from binding. It now looks like this. A bit of a faff but i think it was worthwhile. More to come

Regarding the horn rake, i will need to have a think about that. I may just make it 90 degrees to be safe. ? The carbon tubes are very strong but i intend to fill the 2mm diameter hole with a length of piano wire. This stops the carbon tubes from shattering - something I have experienced in the past with an RC glider. Thanks for the tips anyway..

I said it would be slow. .. Work in progress on the tailplane halves. The two halves separated and i used a length of snake outer, well roughened which was the only tube i had that would accept a pair of 4mm carbon tube joiners with a very snug fit. Basically with the tailplane pinned down over the plan, the joinets and tubes fitted and epoxied in place with appropriate packing to nearly centre it between the main spars and then allowed to set overnight. The webbing between the spars added thdn the lower sheeting, pva along the le seam and thick root spar any cyano to glue it to the ribs. The sheet needed thinning slightly alond the te joiner tube but not much. With that dry, the wing tip block and ply root facing ribs added. For info, i cut oversized rectangular ply blanks and take care to get the joiner holes in the right places. Glued to the root rib with pva, allowed to set hard and then razor planed and sanded to size. With that bit done, I need to start on the horn mechanism. This is my revised plan. The horn is raked forward to give a little differential, more up than down. I dont think the full size was stressed for outside loops.. Note that there are no elevators with my version So, that will be this week's job. It will be tricky drilling the pivot hole to make sure the tailplane is horizontal.. No room for error.. More to come..

If you contact the supplier directly, many will be happy to cut any length you require.

Making a start... As I wanted to use a proper all flying tailplane I started here. This is the tailplane plan. The tailplane will be in 2 halves joined with a pair of CF joiners. The V on the drawing is the correct angle to align with the fuselage and the horizontal line is the correct width of the tailplane. This make the tailplane a little smaller, so I have made it a little wider to compensate for the loss of area. 20mm wider to be precise so wont be noticeable for Stand Off scale. The full size also has two large trim tabs that will be added later. Perhaps a better view. First irritation is that there are no tailplane ribs in the kit. Just an instruction to cut 11 ribs and a sheet of balsa - after cutting your own template I assume. As it happens, it wasn't a big deal. With no elevator, I don't need all that wood at the TE so I cut a 25mm TE from some 6mm balsa I had in stock and I made the ribs longer to suit. The second irritation is that the plan refers to part numbers (in circles) but there is no correlation with the instructions or the parts inventory.. With lots of packing, the tailplane was dry assembled. ... and then glued into place. As you can see I didn't save a huge amount of wood but it all helps. When happy, all glued into place except for the top spar which will get glued after the joiner tubes are installed. The angled centre ribs are (at the moment) strips of 22mm by 5mm balsa slotted for the spar, LE and TE. Just noticed a couple of glue blobs that need removing. When trimmed, the end ribs will be sanded to shape and then capped with 1/32 ply.. More to come but may be a few days..

Its a while since I did a build blog here.. Retired two years ago and moved house 12 months ago (still ongoing would you believe although I can see the end of the 80 storage/transit boxes I bought). Add in to this a brush with Cancer and for some reason writing blogs wasn't anywhere near the top of my priority tree. ? One of the benefits of a house move is a new shed, my new one is 12x10 and has an island bench which is 3 feet wide x 2m long (sorry about the mixed units). Always wanted an island bench and have so far built a replacement to my Mystic 64 and also a new F5J glider (from a kit) plus the usual maintenance stuff that this hobby entails. My Fury is also progressing slowly.. Model storage is up in the loft... ? This kit appeared on Facebook about 3 months ago at a reasonable price. The plan is try and build a reasonable replica of this: Hope that Glyn doesn't mind that I used his lovely photo. Being an MFA kit it obviously quite old, in face the box had solarbo balsa enclosed. The kit is quite complete but with caveats - more of that later. Its a big box.. its been cluttering up my shed since it arrived so I felt compelled to empty the box, sort the contents into something more manageable and throw the box away.. I have a feeling that I may regret that later. The model has a nice polyester GRP fus and cowl and spats and was designed for a Schneurle ported 60 2 stroke. I *think* I can squeeze an OS FS70 in without having to make and horrible holes in the cowl, we shall see. If I cant then I may go el*ctr*c. Its a reasonable size, 1/5 scale and about 1.8m span and the box says that its 'almost' scale, the almost exception being the use of elevators instead of an all moving tailplane. Well, I'll put a fix to that.. hopefully. Lots of ABS bits for the cockpit interior, I suspect most wont be used.. Kit contents are very complete. Surprised that for an an early kit, it has laser cut ply parts, however, no laser cut balsa parts.. The bits were decanted into two boxes, wood and hardware with sheet and strip standing in the corner. and So, with that intro, its time to make a start.. More to come... as I used to say.