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Tim Ballinger

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  1. Tim Ballinger
    I squirrelled away a copy of Mike Freeman’s plans for making a mould for a carbon fibre undercarriage from an RCM&E autumn special and thought it was time to give it a go. Plans for the rig in case anyone missed them ..... I scaled the height down to suit the oodalally I’m building and came up with this... Most economic carbon fibre I could find was a 4 inch plain weave tape. Stuck some 3 mm thick drought excluder to lengths of acetate to provide a thickness guide as per Mikes instructions and had a dry run. The white blobs on the rig were to make sure I got the orientation correct when I layed up. (The legs taper and have rake back so you need to get it right.) All good with the dry run . Mixed up the slow cure epoxy and did it for real. Did not seem quite as good a fit and fudged it a bit by adding a piece of packing to one side . Now is the time to note that my white blobs on the outer mould are missing ! Sadly it was many hours before I noticed. Explains the poor fit. Too late to swap it round so had to leave it and wait to see what came out. As it was well packed with 10 layers of cloth plus extra at the top and bottom bends I hooped that all would still be ok. Surprisingly when it all popped out it looks ok. Need to leave to fully cure now before setting to with the permagrit. I am hopeful I will not have to repeat but we shall see when it is finally rasped down to size.
  2. Tim Ballinger

    Tim Ballinger posted a gallery image in Member Albums

  3. Tim Ballinger

    Tim Ballinger posted a gallery image in Member Albums

  4. Tim Ballinger

    Tim Ballinger posted a gallery image in Member Albums

  5. Tim Ballinger

    Tim Ballinger posted a gallery image in Member Albums

  6. Tim Ballinger

    Tim Ballinger posted a gallery image in Member Albums

  7. Tim Ballinger
    Thanks for the original article Tim. I was intending to use a flat sheet like you but thought I would practice on the pop bottle. Not sure why it had so much pulling power but since it produced a reasonable result in the end I never got to buying any flat sheet. Cheers Tim
  8. Tim Ballinger
    John, Schweppes slimline lemonade or for those that buy their pop by plastic thickness - 0.3mm (12 thou). Peter, End result is my Oodallay now has a full canopy ! Next bit of experimentation for the Oodallay will be carbon fibre u/c . Why ? because I fancy giving it a try! Tim
  9. Tim Ballinger
    Every account of making bespoke canopies out of pop bottles that I have read seems to make it all appear very simple. Until now I have always managed to go with designs that only had windscreens or for which there was a professional canopy available. This time I fancied changing the designers open cockpit windscreen for a full canopy. So having kept Tim Hooper’s article from last years RCM&E special and reasoning his home made tool offered the best chance of avoiding burnt fingers I gave it a go. Here is the tooling... Now as you can see from the plug, I chose a canopy with quite sharp contour changes. I was however surprised at the power of the shrinking plastic. For My first attempt I tried pins to hold the plastic to the edge of the plate while pushing the plug into the heated plastic. No way the shrinking plastic just ripped off. For the 2nd attempt I used hard wood rails to hold the plastic to the 6mm thick ply plate. No way ,this time it pulled the screws out of the edge of the ply , annoyingly just before I was finished. For the 3rd attempt I attached hard wood rails to the ply plate for the outer rails to screw into. This time I nearly made it. Rails held but the edge of the plastic shrank all the way on to the end of the plug - not enough overlap but canopy is useable. 4th attempt - eureka. There’s more too it than just heating and pulling ! Last pic shows a better shot of the 4 th attempt dropped in place on the fus. satisfying in the end.
  10. Tim Ballinger

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  11. Tim Ballinger

    Tim Ballinger posted a gallery image in Member Albums

  12. Tim Ballinger
    Echo Steve’s comments the gnat is super fast and just awe inspiring , at least for those of us that have never come come close to flying a jet. i did post a couple of video clips on the original TN thread . Tim
  13. Tim Ballinger
    Barry, The launch shown above was in zero wind conditions. I know its nice to have a surfeit of thrust to fly away from a hand launch but believe me after that 1/2 to 3/4 throttle is pretty dam quick and full throttle is blindingly fast ! That is on the 3S setup. If you managed to release the full potential of your 4S setup Im not sure you would ever see it again ! Could be I'm just slow an old pilot though Tim
  14. Tim Ballinger
    And finally 1 still which was worth pulling out of the video. Got a lot of video of a very small dot travelling very quickly! Most of the first flight was 1/2 throttle while my brain adjusted, 2nd flight let it go a bit more. I had to add a fair amount of up trim so I think I may pull the cg back a notch for the next flights.
  15. Tim Ballinger

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  16. Tim Ballinger
    And the the launch...
  17. Tim Ballinger
      Remembered how to add video properly now . Clearly the first landing   Edited By Tim Ballinger on 07/02/2020 09:22:22
  18. Tim Ballinger
    Wow what a thrill. Finally got a flying day again so had the Gnat maiden flight. No wind , blue sky bright sun, so apart from probably not being able to see it, why not. Absolutely brilliant, no problem pulling away from the hand launch, oodles of power. Never flow anything so fast, I’ll be buzzing for days! Thanks Tony. Difficult to capture on an iPhone but here are 2 short videos . 1st and 1st landing.   https://youtu.be/FSzPqvK18Hc   https://youtu.be/wP-DKu7dRQE   Need to work on getting the links to work.... tomorrow! Tim     Edited By Tim Ballinger on 06/02/2020 18:10:33 Edited By Tim Ballinger on 06/02/2020 18:11:51
  19. Tim Ballinger
    Paul, Great, looks like you have it covered. Tim
  20. Tim Ballinger
    Paul, I am no ace with old 2 strokes and you may be so I apologise if I am teaching you to suck eggs as it were but has it been run recently or just stored for 38 years ? Just asking as it might need some TLC before you fire it up . Tim
  21. Tim Ballinger
    Paul, Yep 10x6 is good. Is that ST the same one you bought way back when ? Sorry I got a bit sidetracked this week so have not posted the cowls yet. Will do it by end of the week. Tim
  22. Tim Ballinger
    Peter, I think I have only ever seen 2.0.1 listed since this first went public on 14 Jan . Tim
  23. Tim Ballinger
    Interesting method Martin, presumably that is epoxy resin you are using for both gel coat and lay up. I had set off with the same intent , remembering how I used to do it, but then saw this polyester resin gel coat which was given a good write up and was brewed for epoxy compatibility. It seemed to work just fine with my first attempt, it was just that I let it get too thin in one place. Hence I tried a pigment next time so that I could see what I was doing. A second coat was warned against with the resin I used as it was said it would not bond properly too itself once cured. i think I might revert to epoxy resin for both next time like yourself. Tim
  24. Tim Ballinger
    Cowl no 3 : Not perfect but quite pleased with this one . Certainly useable just needs a few blemishes removing. It’s actually the same weight as cowl no 1 so some consistency. After the failure with cowl no 2 I was very sparing with the coloured gel coat thickness and you can see the brush marks coming through or rather the light coming through so certainly not the perfect solid colour. Really a bit academic as it will be primed and painted. As far this cowl goes that’s it now as there are two very useable cowls for Paul to play with on his 172 build project. Had I waited longer for the gel coat on cowl 2 to cure I would probably have had a good solid colour but it would have been at the expense of extra weight as that failed attempt came out at 42g. I’m still not sure why the coloured gel coat appears to be so difficult to brush on evenly. I am even wondering if the new brushes I used had something on them that caused the issue. I have one new brush left so I might give it a good clean first then try brushing a sample on something to check it out. If not that then perhaps sticking with the same manufacturer for paste and resin might be the answer. Anyway that’s it folks, mission accomplished. Tim Edited By Tim Ballinger on 26/01/2020 14:58:48 Edited By Tim Ballinger on 26/01/2020 15:06:01
  25. Tim Ballinger

    Tim Ballinger posted a gallery image in Member Albums

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