Mike Chantler

I Like the simple rubber securing bit on the link, is that heat shrink?

Little progress as weather been good for going up the hill and am back at work. Sadly broke fus of the model I have been flying continuously for the last year so this will need some attention. But got the new MEKP catalyst, mixed up, painted on to half size bit of 3D print, and still sticky after 2 days! Turns out there are two types of polyester duh! 🙄 . One cures with MEKP and one cures with BPO paste, ISOPON laminating polyester is the latter 🙄 Now waiting for the other stuff. In meantime printed off a full size section of nose: You can see the 3d print layers: But light sanding and two layers of polyester should do it 🙂 And yes my 3D design skills are primitive! But will do for up the hill. I plan to use 3D print for top half of front fus. Still needs modified for battery box, ballast tubes and some longitudinal carbon rod re-inforcement (otherwise I suspect it will be vulnerable to breaking along the print laminations). Will post models for anyone who is interested later after i'm happier with design.

The first time I glassed a fuselage I made a complete mess of it, it kind of bubbled up all over the place, had several goes and it just got worse, turned out that I was using too much epoxy, wasn't until second build that I realised what i had been doing wrong(!) Very frustrating as I had spent quite a bit of time shaping and sanding (not as good as yours mind you).

Wow, that's a good wingspan 👍

It's hanger rash which is the main problem for me - as our slopes are nice and grassy, although there are some isolated small rocks that we manage to find(!) Recently I've taken creating wing and fuselage bags for my planes which has helped enormously. More of a problem is that the foam contact glue, although it sands, it is tougher than the XPS and can leave high points if it gap fills at all. You then need quite a bit of patience that balsa and aliphatic would not. I may yet cut these tips off and replace with balsa 🙄

Yes, good point, and I will likely rethink this. I'm kind of used to using kevlar under the skins which ends up with a pretty neat and indestructible hinge: However, on the elliptical wings I can't do this as the top skin does not follow a straight line at the aileron hinge (it goes across two of the foam panels). So will likely just use balsa facings and std hinges. But first will cover wing in light-weight glass to reduce the chances of the ailerons warping which I have had happen before 😞

Great build - and curious as to shiny chrome bits on ends of hinges?

Looks fantastic 🤩

So cut TE with newly purchased right-angled Dremel attachment: This thing is brilliant! 🙂 🙂 🙂 Should of got it ages ago. Then added XPS tip blocks with 3mm lite ply reinforcement: Now have to resist trying to carve the tips before glue completely set 🤔

Was scratching my head a bit about how to do the aileron hinges - normally I put light kevlar below the top skin and this gives a bullet proof and very tight hinge. However, the ailerons span two of the wing foam sections so you can't do this for the spit, and I've only ever built straight-edged wings before. So remembered some guys on rcGroups cutting out sections from foam veneered wings and putting in wood sub TE and aileron facing before cutting ailerons out, they used some thin ply to create aligned spaces for the hinges. Had a test go on that wing I bodged with too little vacuum: Think this worked well in dry fit: but it's easy to mess up the skins - so thought I would glass the wings first - and this would also limit warping of ailerons. But to glass the wings I need the tips.

Experimented with finishing some test 3d prints. Light sanding of spinner with 180 grit followed by 4 coats high-build primmer: Not bad for a matte finish, but you can still see the 3d layers, especially at the top where it was awkward to sand. Next attempt used polyester resin plus micro-balloons - however, it never set!!! Being a cheap skate I thought I would use some catalyst it got with a tooling kit a while back with cheap can of resin from Halfords, after a little investigation discovered MEPK only has shelf life of 6 months and my hardener was at least 5 years old!! Dunce 🙄 lol So new MEKP on order!

Thanks Matt, will see how enthusiastic I am at that stage of the build - i've certainly crushed quite a bit of XPS before 🙂 It looked like you were using balsa cores in that thread, do you know if anyone bagged XPS in the same way on that mass build? I'd be worried about warping the XPS? PS I do have a vacuum regulator in the loop. back to work today so build will go a bit slow from here.

And will think about cannons 🙄

Added and shaped this morning So am now pretty happy with the LE and bagging - will slowly add TE shaping, ailerons, finishing etc (may try laminating film on test first to see what I would do with the LEs). While I'm doing bits of physical stuff to keep me sane - I'll tackle a bit more of the Fusion 360 stuff and think about how to do the rear fuselage (ideas vary from carving foam, doing foam vertical bread and butter, to using 3D prints as moulds - yup no clear ideas yet except probably not lost foam).

Last night I managed to ignore my own instructions (who reads instructions anyway?) missed out the tape the beds with protective tape step, noticed as assembling, and pushed in some A3 laminating pouches quickly but they did not protect all of the wing: Will sand off easily, but just as well I noticed 😮. I'm going to try and be much more patient in future ...

Great 🙂 thanks! threads look very valuable. Nice to see that other folk use 12v speed 600 sized vac pumps - I had wondered about their longevity. I've tried the thick PVC stuff, and 75 micron laminating film - both which left dimples with me. But laminating thicker laminating film sounds a great idea 👍 - I'm definitely going to give this a go - and so think I now might replace the sheet balsa tail feathers with aerofoil section XPS 🙂

Damn, and good point, got excited about the build and added/shaped cedar 🙄 I'm finding that the Titebond Original sets really quickly - so couldn't resist shaping lol

Normally I always forget at least one thing in the sequence, which usually sends me into a panic of sticky epoxy gloves and newspaper and things get covered in sticky epoxy that shouldn't 😮. So, wrote an aide memoire for myself: apologies , I'm sticking it here, as know I'll have no clue where I have stored it if I don't put it in the build log 🙂

skins look fine so added 6mm balsa sub LE, this will get an additional 3mm cedar LE once shaped a bit: This is slightly different as I think Paul recommended a single 5 mm balsa LE, but I wasn't confident of getting the elliptical(ish) shape and also like the ding protection of cedar.

Brilliant! Thanks Matty, I will definitely check this method out, looks great, I can even experiment by tripling up some A3 150 micron pouches I got by mistake (meant to buy more 75 micron for covering a 60" plank - only discovered it was 150 when I tried to get it to go round a sub TE that had a nice square edge 🤔 ) Nebuliser pumps look good (I have an oil vacuum pump but never used it as it sprays a fine sheen of oil everywhere if you don't have exhaust trunking) 😞

looks amazing! 🙂👍

hmmm... yes I think I'll have to bite the bullet at some stage and buy a better pump. And forgot I meant to have a look at using mylars and glass + veneer - did have a go ages back at glass only, but ended with dimpled texture as the plastic I used was too flexible. I do now have some .5mm mylar but am reluctant to use it as I found it very difficult to source! (not to mention I find the whole process a bit frightening). Anyway - pulled the veneer only wing out and it's good enough to use (ish). Everything stuck, but LE veneer overhang a bit crushed - but will just sand/cut this off: Fluff is from the breather getting stuck to the veneer where the epoxy leaked out 🙂

So, new bag, extra careful with assembling everything, and pulled .5 bar 🙂, also used old 'flat'' thicker veneer, more generous with epoxy , New quick release connector to bag definitely made assembly less fraught:

Had bit of a disaster last month when bagging a wing which i had not done for a while. Dry run pulled 0.4 bar but must have added a leak that my puny £12 pump could not cope with, and ended up with .2 bar, thought I might get away with it but: Also the veneer was much thinner and 'bubbly" than I have used before - so result had to be binned 😞

Tested root against 3D print of profile to reassure myself that 3d model is ok and I surprised that it is nice and reasonably in agreement: 🙂