chris Ibbotson

I was not happy with the fitting of the hatch to the fuzz . So 3mm depron was glued and sanded until a satisfactory fit was achieved. | The "nav" lights were then installed in there final position. Time now for a cautionary tale. I felt the need to look at the light show on the wing. So I connected an ESC & receiver and a lipo battery to produce a 4.8 volt supply for the nav lights. I had powered the lights previous to skinning the main wing and they worked fine. I don't have any photo's of what happened next as it was all a bit quick. The battery was connected and within milliseconds the battery was disconnected as it had reached a temperature that my hand could not stand as well as swelling in an alarming way. The battery was thrown out of the garage on to the concrete drive and left for over an hour to cool down. The ESC was so hot it had melted the plastic covering on the heat sink. I could not understand what had gone wrong, the ESC had been in use in another plane, the Rx had been in use in the same plane with no problems. The light came on and the penny dropped. I had converted from JST to XT 60 connectors on all batteries and ESC's. The fault has been found to be my incorrect connection of the ESC. I had soldered a positive wire to the negative terminal of the connector and neg to pos. This gave a direct short to the battery. In the words of Dell boy What a Pl****er. I have now looked and double checked all of my converted connectors. All I can say is check and double check. This has cost me a battery and an ESC.

Hi Daz, Great to see you back in the build zone. I watched your other builds with great delight and will be watching and following this build. Don't forget this is a hobby/enjoyment and not a race to build. You take your time and enjoy your build. I will follow and enjoy your build. Best regards Chris

Martian, thank you for your concern about the extra work. To me it was extra pleasure because I enjoy building and I corrected my error. Thanks. So down to work. The wing wiring was tidied up as well as making sure all servo's and connections worked. As they all worked . The top wing was now skinned with 3mm depron. The full wing was skinned and the wing vortex tips were glued in place using P.U glue for a smoother join when sanded down. The main wing was placed in position and the four wing bolts were drilled out. The rudder and elevator snakes were fitted using 'Tie' wraps and glued with 5min epoxy glue. The top rear deck was now able to be covered with 6mm depron. The rear stabiliser's were aligned with the main wing and using P.U glue was glued in place. Look at the gap between the rear wing and the main wing. The result to date, to me , is a nice looking partially built Islander. The next stage is the glassing of the plane. So it might be a little while till the next update, due to drying time. Have a relaxing Easter break and I will be back with more updates. Regards Chris