Peter Garsden

Sorry missed this post. My pilot supplier is Andy Meade whom you can message on this forum.

Thank you for that Chris. That is how I should have built the tailplane like the fin, but I don't think it will make much difference. So to the fuselage servos. Unlike the Flamingo whose rear cockpit slopes acutely backwards, the Petrel is more upright, which does not give any room for screwing down the servo screws and horn central screw whilst in situ, so the ply tray should be removable. I am sure there are many ways of doing this but I opted for 2 blocks of balsa block, shaped to the sides of the fuselage which is tricky due to the curve topped off with a piece of 1.5mm ply to hold the screws, which I put in at an angle to give access for a screw driver. You can see that I used a shaping tool to trace the curve of the fuselage once I had measured and cut the servo tray. Tricky because one has to make allowances for the side 3mm spruce rail, and the formers. There is room for the large old faithful Futaba S3003 which are only £8 each. This shows that the tray has to fit just where the 3mm spruce spar and the ply tab are so cut outs have to be made. One can also see that I have omitted the cross members to allow easier access to the space in between F4 and F5. This shows better the cross members that I left out until the servos are fitted. You can just about see that I have drilled and screwed in the servo tray with 4 screws at an angle so that when the top plywood skin is on I can unscrew from outside so as to remove the tray in one piece.

Oh dear Mike. How disappointing. I think I have used plastic bellcranks available, I think, from SLEC before but of course they are a different matter. I just happened to have some spare 1mm Aluminium Sheet knocking around. Like the comments on the other blog it is a critical piece of kit unlike a pilot, which a friend of mine - Andy Meade - has printed to the correct scale and which I need to paint etc - more of which later in the build. Incidentally, I have looked at the instructions from Chris again. One is not meant to glue the bellcrank in at this stage. First one makes the tailplanes then lines up the bellcrank against the root rib of the tailplane in order to get the hole for the activator wire absolutely in the correct position, so that each tailplane is in the correct position ie lined up both in plan view and front view. I am going to get round that problem by lining everything up in situ as it were. Doh!

I get it now. I think the answer would have been to trace the tailplane outline onto the other side of the plan and make a left half - too late now. I know Chris Williams follows this blog so maybe he can comment. Never could answer physics questions on leverage correctly at school.

Re Panel Lines, I usually use a Staedler Black Pen and then highlights with a White Gel Pen. Oh and a flexible ruler, balsa shapes, shading with a diluted black paint airbrush and post it notes

Good point MikeQ. I am simply following Chris's instructions in his RCM&E article. He says taper down the LE blanks before adding the rest of the structure. Not being a Physics major, I don't think I can reason this one through, but looking at it simply, the support tubes are at right angles to the fin so I presume that the taper will be equal top and bottom towards the tip of the tailplanes? If I am wrong then yes there would be a problem with each half but as the taper is equal both sides, I don't think it will matter?

Next job is to assemble the tailplane over the plan at least each half at a time. As it is symmetrical one does not need to worry about which hand is which. First of all one makes up the trailing edge which consists of a middle piece of 1.5mm birch ply with 3mm balsa laminated each side. First one glues the inner ply together then the top piece of 3mm balsa. One then takes it off the plan, turns it over and applies the other side so that one has a ply sandwich with 3mm each side. The 3mm is sanded down to follow the profile of the tailplane/stab One can see the sandwich of the trailing edge in this photo. In order to line up the balsa in the correct position I used pins to follow the curve. When the trailing edge is complete - I used cyano - I pinned the leading edge blank to the plan and attached the trailing edge, then the tip rib T8 then the ribs in between also with cyano and finally the tip balsa.

The All Moving Tailplane - tricky to line up of course, and keep rigid, as the nature of the beast predicts so care is needed with this. The first step is to glue the 2off 4.5mm leading edge pieces together and pair them down from 9mm to 6mm at the tips. I did this carefully with my rotating disc sander - so much easier than trying to plane it. I first of all held in place the 1.5mm spar to act as an indicator to draw lines, then glued it on afterwards. Next one glues on the root end T1 rib with some epoxy as this will take some load. I drew a line down the middle to ensure T1 is central. I also laid the tailplane flat on the bench, again to make sure there is no twist in the tailplane half. The tubing I have cut to size with an overlap for later trimming with a Dremmel. Needless to say the tube has to be fashioned at the ends with a file so as to remove any burrs. The tube supports are also glued in using epoxy and microfibres mix, first having filed some abrasion to the tubes to act as a better base for the glue.

And so to the Rudder. This is the trailing edge formed with cyano over the plan. It consists of a lamination of 1.5mm ply with laminations of 3mm balsa. Very handy to have the laser cut parts as it consists of many interlinking pieces. Also put the pins in the correct position to take overlay of balsa. The glue in R6 to take the trailing edge Then attach the trailing having attached the laminations of balsa on both sides. Then you can slide in the ribs which fit very well. Also fillings of block balsa at the bottom to take the carbon tube for the rudder horns, and some 6mm for hinge support and the block balsa at the top and front to complete the build.

I ummed and awed about the All Moving Tailplane crank as it consists of 2 concentric tubes, the larger of which is epoxied to the bellcrank, and the other smaller one fits inside and is epoxied to the fin. The problem was, how to avoid contaminating one tube with glue from the other which would jam up the mechanism. So first of all I epoxied the larger tube to the bellcrank and ran a fillet round its circumference. I made sure that it was the right length to fit snugly between the ply walls inside the fin to avoid wobble. Next I cut the smaller tube with some overlap which can be trimmed off later with a dremmel and inserted it through the fin and the bellcrank in position making sure that the correct hole goes to the correct bits ie the back takes the other tailplane pivot wire. I then applied epoxy and moved the tube in and out to coat the inside of the hole in the fin. Not too many microballoons to the mix Smaller tube shown through the middle and out the other side ready for epoxy Again ready for glue