John Rickett 102

A Laser 180 would be more than enough, I'm using one to power a 26lb model. The Bird Dog isn't supposed to be aerobatic but at 15lb I'd expect the Laser to give it a sparkling rate of climb, if needed. A 30cc petrol 4 stroke would also be suitable.

Remove the screw completely, its a long pin which goes through the pivot. Once that's removed the pivot should slide out easily.

Does anyone know if the (spare) rpm sensor on a RCxel ignition module can be connected directly to a Futaba receiver for telemetry, instead of having to use the Futaba SBS-01RO sensor? Thanks

Thanks Chaps for the compliments, it makes it all worthwhile. Richard, I'm going tomorrow to set up, its too far for me now get up early, drive there, stand all day and then drive home. I'll ask if its possible put them in the same room as I think they try to group in categories - no guarantees though.

It took much longer than expected to assemble all the bits, however, next stop - Gaydon on Sunday.

Ben's son Colin took over the supply of the kits and plans. The website is still active: https://www.benbucklevintage.com/index.php?main_page=contact_us The Radio Queen is also still shown as being produced

Ok Richard, congratulations on having flown the Gull 4, presumably it all ended well even if the aileron response was lacking? Thanks for the reassurance that bowed gaps are not just the province of models. Yes, they can be found on quite a lot of old wooden aircraft, sometimes worse than this, I wonder though if those aircraft started out with bowed edges or if they’ve crept in over the years. As a new build I’m a bit disappointed when I’d hoped to make everything as true as I could, only to realise I’ve made the silly mistake of not building in the prevention – such is the joy of modelling! Sealing the aileron gap is a good idea, I’ll note that and add some tape after its painted, even if not strictly needed it will be better to be able to fly with reduced aileron movement.

I should also have said, after applying the first coat heat up the area with a heat gun, this will make the epoxy penetrate the wood. Nothing will get through after that.

Epoxy resin is very good as a fuel proofer on ply. Make sure that the ambient temperature does not drop below about 18C when applying and for the duration of the cure and you'd be ok after 2 or 3 days. Two coats is better than one, so if you can rub it down without seeing any balling on the glass paper you will know that you left the first coat long enough.

Outside, the drizzle had set in so might as well do something productive in the workroom, even if mundane, the jobs have to be done. A small milestone reached with the rib stitching being completed on one wing. Using micopore tape is a much better option, it will follow the curves and provide, to my mind, a more realistic result. A couple of cross braces had been built in for the wing rib at the root of the aileron to prevent the starved horse effect when shrinking the covering, but overlooked to do the same with the flap box. There are a thousand little errors that can be made when building but I never seem to learn!

The vac-formed windows have now been returned by Sarik and glued into the doors. After a bit of careful trimming it was satisfying to know they dropped into the recesses without inducing stresses into the wooden surrounds. Sarik advised that the best tool to trim PETG is a pair of sharp tin snips, which Mr Amazon had in stock and delivered the next day. The method of making simulated rib stitches wasn’t consistent. In some places the top strip of Koverall wouldn’t stay adhered between stitches giving a bulky look to the effect. The rudder is the worst but its painted now and while its not as good as I’d like, I’m reluctant to strip off the covering and start again, but thought there could be a better method. For the wings I’ll use micropore surgical tape as the top covering. The tape appears to be the same as the (now unobtainable) 3M hair set tape but without the pinked edge, and its not tinted pink, apart from that it seems to be the same stuff so well worth a try. It has a light adhesive on one side and being porous will accept dope. Pictured here is a photo of an aileron showing the promising result, the wings and flap boxes will be finished using this method. So far just the bottom of one wing has been done and all is well. If the tape is the same as the hair set tape, which I’ve used many times in the past, there should be no problems…….he says confidently.

Ok Paul, Thanks for the information. Making the plugs from ply and skinning them with Isopon P38 wasn't particularly difficult, it was the moulding that was the hold-up as I don't have any vac forming equipment. I've now been told by Sarik that three windows have been formed on the supplied plugs and are being returned, they are willing to do more if required once these have been checked.

I had bought a vinyl cutter about three years ago although up to now had only cut paint masks and vinyl lettering, having read that Richard Crapp had cut shapes in plasticard for his current project, I thought I’d try the same. A simple bit of design and hey presto, the machine will cut the acetate landing light cover and the plasticard rim, both of these are for the right-hand lamp. The cutter also produced little rims for the wing steps, these would have been a real challenge if tried with litho, which I would have done prior to getting the cutter One of the practices observed from aircraft restorers is that when covering a large area, any projections are best covered using scraps of material prior to laying on the main piece. The practice can be applied at our scale - control snake outlets, rigging attachments, a canopy surround, nav lights or the like are easier to go round if working with small pieces of material leaving a wide margin. Holes in the main piece of material can then be cut larger and do not have to be so precise to still form a tidy finish. With that concept in mind, I thought I’d try covering the landing light surrounds with scraps pre-cut using the vinyl cutter. A piece of fabric was laid on a flat surface to which parcel tape (wonderful stuff for our purposes) had been stuck. The fabric was given a coat of dope to lock the weave and then allowed to dry. Here a scrap piece of fabric has been given a single coat of dope. The shiny side (which was face down) will attach itself readily to the tacky surface of the cutting board. Using the previously designed shape of the landing light and a little bit of manipulation of the cutter software, an outline was then cut out, leaving a margin of about ¾”. A coat of fabric cement had been applied to the area, so once placed on the wing another coat of well thinned fabric cement sealed the patch in position. When it comes to covering the wing, it should now be much easier to cut an oversized hole around the landing light rim yet still have a neat edge against the rim. The result is not perfect as the fabric will distort slightly as soon as the dope is softened, but its probably much better than trying to cut round the light surround from a large piece of cloth. Here the covered wing with the covering cut around the light, I believe that after a couple of coats of dope and some primer/filler the edge should look acceptable Both outer panels have now been covered so its on to the rather tedious task of simulated rib stitching

Its looking good Steve. The design is sound and will fly well, there’s not much point in reducing wood thicknesses, though being careful with the finish will pay dividends. You could certainly save weight with modern servos, a Futaba S148 which would have been a standard fit at the time has a torque of 3.0 kg-cm (at 6v). The current Hitec HS-81 has a similar torque and weighs 16.6 gm compared to the Futaba at 45.4 gm. I’d advise not to skimp on cheap servos but if you look for ones rated at 3.0 kg-cm, they will do the job and save a considerable amount of weight. Just make sure when fitting out that everything is as far forward as possible, you’re unlikely to end up with a model with a too-far-forward cg.

If you want to be exact, this is what the CAA currently require. By 'main body' presumably they mean the fuselage but not the wings or tailplane. How to label your drone or model aircraft Your operator ID must be: visible from the outside, or within a compartment that can easily be accessed without using a tool clear and in block capitals taller than 3mm secure and safe from damage on the main body of the aircraft

A decent day for spraying eventually arrived so the window plugs were each given three wet coats of paint, to get as high gloss as possible, and have now been sent to Sarik for vac forming. All the tail end now has the ribs tapes applied. As wetting out the cotton thread with fabric cement was a messy process, I thought another approach might work. This time a piece of tissue was given a coat of shrinking dope followed by a coat of fabric cement. When dry, thread straight off a reel, was wound round the nails on top of the tissue. A couple of liberal coats of fabric cement were then brushed onto the thread to stick this to the tissue. It worked ok, so same result as before but less messy. Here, the dried tissue has started to be cut into ¼” strips. The tissue doesn't adhere to the parcel tape so little chance of damage when lifting each strip from the board. A closer view of a prepared strip. Here, a strip pasted onto the covering and another with the top strip overlaid. Apart from a couple of sealing coats of non-shrinking dope, there's nothing more to do to this part now prior to painting.

With getting close to glazing my latest project, this topic sparked interest. I tried a simple experiment to compare the holding qualities of yellow tube UHU with De Luxe Materials canopy glue. An offcut of 0.5mm PETG was stuck to thin strips of spruce, which will be used as the glazing bars. After allowing each to dry over night, both stuck but the yellow UHU joint was easily separated with a thumbnail, the canopy glue has resisted attempts to separate and I think would either break the wood or crease the plastic if more force was applied. Its an interesting result as the wood used for the UHU joint has a larger surface area so I'd have expected it to have a better grip. Inspection shows there was almost no penetration of glue into the wood. I suppose its reasonable that a product intended for a particular purpose will perform better than a general purpose adhesive. At least its given me reassurance that canopy glue is pretty good stuff.

Ok Richard, pleased to hear you are making progress. I’m not sure you’re correct about the stitching only being required on the rudder and elevators, here’s a picture of the fin which shows it’s stitched. It’s the clearest one I’ve found but most pictures look as if all but the leading edges were stitched. As you are basing your finish on a recently restored Gull, it’s appropriate to use pinked tapes if that’s how it was recovered, I wanted the Vega Gull to be as it left the works in 1936 which means it probably had plain tapes. If it helps, a useful source of small screws is Quicktest. If you are going to push them into drilled holes and are not concerned about a particular thread, they are a cheap source. They can be bought here.

Brian, You'll need some sharp scissors to cut it. While very good and ideal for our purposes, its extremely light and will drag, pulling the weave if not handled carefully.

For this model I thought I’d try a different method of simulated rib stitching. Previously I’d used Solartex for both the stitch carrier and the top tapes. I also wanted to know the likelihood of the aircraft having plain or pinked tapes. As far as I can tell, pinked tapes started to be used just prior to the 2nd world war, as this particular aircraft was produced in 1936 its likely that plain tapes were used. To my mind they are not as attractive as pinked tapes but plain tape wouldn't be inappropriate and they'd be considerably cheaper, in fact, free as I could cut my own. The idea was to use heavyweight tissue as the stitch carrier and polyester fabric for the top tapes. First an oversized piece of tissue was placed on a flat surface (an offcut of ply) which had been covered in parcel tape. The tissue was given a coat of thinned fabric cement to pre-shrink the tissue as well as create an adhesive surface. Thick cotton thread was dipped in the same thinned fabric cement and drawn through the fingers to remove the excess cement - this is a messy process but needs must in the pursuit of scale fidelity. The thread was wound over spaced nails (½” pitch, which equates to 2” at full scale) with the tissue underneath. Further fabric cement was brushed on to wet out the previous applications and firmly stick the thread to the tissue. Once dry, which only took a few minutes, the tissue was sliced up in ¼” widths. For interest, a ½” pitch was chosen based on an American standard (AC 43.13-1B) applicable to fabric coverings where original information is unknown. I couldn’t find a British standard and it may not have existed in 1936 anyway, so assumed there would be little if any difference between what the British and Americans had discovered through trial and error, and later adopted in a standard. The relevant page is shown below. On previous models I had doped the wings and tail parts after application of the tapes, but this time doped them first. Solartex has an impervious heat activated adhesive layer which can be ironed on but the new method required a sticky surface (once dissolved) to achieve the same adhesion, so all the fabric covered parts were doped (non-tautening dope) before beginning the rib stitching process. Each strip was then placed over a rib, with the strip inverted to put the stitch underneath the tissue. Well thinned fabric cement was applied to attach the tissue but think that dope would probably do the same job, if a little slower to dry. For the top tapes, offcuts of Koverall were given a coat of fabric cement, in a similar manner to the tissue and when dry, cut into ½” strips and again attached with more thinned fabric cement. The result is less bulky than using Solartex – tissue is thinner and plain Koverall doesn’t have the added adhesive and coloured layers, I was quite pleased with the effect. The truth will come out once the final finish is applied, just barely visible tapes but bold stitches is what I’d like to achieve.

Thank you Brian, I get most of my supplies from Bucks Composites. I've just checked the site though and the lightest advertised just now is 25g. You could try giving Graham a call to see if he's going to restock. There is an ebay seller here asking £12.15 for 5m of 18g - that seems a good price.

I was pleased with the lightweight fibreglass covering of the flap boxes undersides so covered each of the flaps in the same lightweight (19 gm) cloth. Prior to covering it was possible to twist the flaps if enough force was applied, but it takes far more torque to put any kind of twist in now. Brushing out the wrinkles during cloth application seemed to give a flat surface, though during the curing process some wrinkles would creep in again. All that could be done was to sand flat, apply patches where the cloth has been sanded away and then blend in – effective but time consuming. I’ve since discovered that its better, once the cloth has been completely wetted out, to tug at the edges as if to stretch the cloth, perhaps only a millimetre or so is gained but its sufficient to take out any invisible slack and prevent the wrinkles forming. Previously, my normal preference for covering a largeish model was fabric, especially if the original had been fabric covered. Having now experienced the strength, rigidity and minimal weight gain of really light glass cloth and resin, I think it’s the way to go in the future for those parts, like flaps or fully sheeted tails. The flaps on this model are sheeted in 3/32” balsa but I believe now I could have used 1/16” and achieved more than enough strength. Here a flap box has had a coat of resin brushed on, rubbed down with 180 grade wet & dry cloth (used wet) and then given a further coat of resin using the credit card squeegee technique. After allowing 2 days to cure, 400 grade wet & dry cloth soon produced a surface to which a coat of primer/filler could be applied. To further keep down the weight, the insides of the flaps and flap boxes will only be given a light coat of colour, if someone wants to try and peer into the flap recesses and find fault, that’s ok with me! All the control linkages have now been made up. In trying to keep with Edgar Percival’s quest for a clean design which minimises parasite drag, the flaps and elevator rods are internal. The elevator rod is 3mm, that’s a bit of weight right at the back where it’s not wanted, but with the length of the rod being 7” and the elevator area at about 112sq ins, I didn’t want the chance of flexing to occur. The flaps and aileron rods are 2mm, which I think is sufficient given their short lengths. None of this has any scientific basis but gives me peace of mind. Ignorance is bliss! The servo covers are sheet balsa covered either side with glass cloth. Rudder and tailwheel are both closed loop using 80lb rated, nylon covered fishing trace. The ferrules supplied are large so instead I’ve used 2mm od brass tube. By squeezing the tubes oval, two cables (0.75mm od) will go through the hole. The ferrules were then nipped with side cutters and a spot of thin cyano applied. The cables run in 2mm id plastic tube, using tube allows for the cables to be fitted once covering and painting is completed. The tops of the cabin doors and aft cockpit have single curvature windows, on the model the radius is about 1”. I thought at first that 0.5mm PETG clear sheet would easily follow the curve.…until I tried it, then found that there is a lot of spring in the material which would be difficult to hold while glue was setting but also that the spring probably would, over time, distort the doors. Another plan B was required. A phone call to Sarik confirmed they could vac form the windows if I provided suitable plugs. Their suggestion for ‘one-offs’ was for a plug to be formed from plywood, which had been coated with Upol Easy 1 or Isopon P38 filler sanded to a smooth finish. They further suggested that a plug should be raised a small amount above the finished height (a piece of wood fixed to the base) to allow for the fillet during pressing and that the sides should be bevelled slightly so that the formed sheet will release from the plug. Armed with their suggestions a couple of plugs were made. Its possible that on the real aircraft, the front and back curves are the same, but on the model they have come out slightly differently, it’s not a lot, but an unknown to me whether the formed shapes would readily adapt to a slightly different shape. If the curves had been the same just one plug would have been needed but I decided to play safe and make them handed. A DIY electric planer produced the rough shape which was then finished with an orbital sander. Here, the two plugs prior to coating with P38, are lined up with the doors. The coated, primed and sanded plugs. Its been reported by she who observes such things that all the surfaces in the kitchen have taken on a faint grey colour - who would have thought that P38 dust would travel far! In discovering how difficult it was to curve the side windows, I thought I had better check that the curved portion above the windscreen panels would accept the PETG sheet. The conclusion was - with difficulty, so the decision was made to make a plug for that part as well. The plugs are all ready for a coat of gloss paint, once the weather cooperates. Fortunately, the five panels which make up the front windscreen are completely flat so should be straightforward to glaze. As an aside, Percival introduced a blown curved windscreen later on, as fitted to the Proctor, though some owners didn’t like the visual distortion and had their aircraft retro fitted with the flat panels windscreen.

Richard, I've a box of A4 sheets, enough to last until I'm 999 which is unlikely, pm your address and I'll send you some. I must have had this box for 30 years and despite building many models in that time, have only worn out a few - they last forever. My thoughts are that tracing through using carbon paper will only introduce one error, whereas the pinprick method could introduce two, one if the pinpricks are not exactly in the centre of the line and another when the dots are lined up with the french curve. If you use, say, a red or green ball point pen, you can see on the plan all the lines that you've covered.

That's interesting Richard, why do you prefer the pin prick method instead of good old fashioned carbon paper?

Are you describing your old transmitter or the 16IZ? The manual I have for the 16IZ explains how to set flaperons and airbrakes on pages 130/131, its no different to the 16SZ.