The Whispering Death

[Tim Mackey]

Doh

[MThemadhatter]

Deja vu

 

After the first parcel was lost my RM I now have the replacement fuse bits I can now catch back up !!

 

Having put one fuse together before I should be able to get his one built a lot quicker. The laminated sides will make thing a lot easier, I had a go at bending one the fuse sides round F2 and it is far, far easier. I can also precut the holes for the snakes as I know where to cut them form the previous fuse.

 

[MThemadhatter]

Things have been moving on a lot faster now.

 

I have been building the fuse again incorporating some of the lessons I learnt last time.

 

I used the servo and wing plate to help square up the forward formers and fuse. I also used "super phatic" for glueing most of the formers and it is very nice to use.

 

I cut some jig pieces to hold the forward formers in place and ensure that the fuse was straight. I will cut them off once both layers of the fuse sides are on. i have also left the forward sections of the ply wing seat doubler loose. Once the sides are on I will glue this section in place.

 

The thinner wood is a lot , lot easier to shape. I wetted it and left it over night

 

I then glued the fuse sides to the formers, and held them in place with tape till dry.

 

I have made up this section to hold the the sides in place to, that former is the front of the cockpit.

 

The retract servo has arrived. I have placed it like this so that it can be removed, I might brace the sides of the servo to give it some more support.

 

Tail retract now in place, the snake is till being set up.

 

Here is the progress on the torpedo. Front sectoion is rolled ply and the tail section is from blue foam.

And here we have last last couple of days progress. The forward section that the battery is sat in is the raydome, I have a feeling that I will need to strip plank this section. I am considering putting the battery for the retracts here but it won't be accessible once that sections is finished.

 

I am now sorting out the control runs in the fuse. Once they are done I will put it back in the jig and sheet the rear upper section of the fuse to lock it in shape from F7 backwards. I will then stick the second sheet of the sides on to the first.

[Danny Fenton]

Looking really good there. Will the total thickness of the fus sides be the same just laminated from two bits? You could always use a slightly heavier glass cloth in this area if you are worried, but it looks like it should be fine to me.

 

I am with Tim on the props, the APC electric props are much more efficient, you can hear the difference.

 

That torpedo is excellent

 

Cheers

Danny

[MThemadhatter]

Yes the fuse sides wil be the same thickness. It's worth noting that a lot of it will be sanded away to blend in with the sheeting.

 

I have just been up in the work shop cutting the rear side sheeting and wetting it and wrapping it around the rear fuse to put the shape into it before I glue it on tomorrow. However again it looks like another hard task as it has to bend around and in slightly I am looking at the build photo's to try and get an idea of how he did it. I might have to do it in large strips.

I agree about the APC electric props but there is not much meat left around the hub once I have made an 8mm hole through them, plus I remember breaking a lot of them. I might just use APC glow or master S series props.

[MThemadhatter]

On that note can anyone tell me what this means on the plan

 

I am talking about the way line going between up the fuse side ??

[Danny Fenton]

can you pull back a bit and show us more?

 

Cheers

Danny

[MThemadhatter]

Sure here is the tail section

 

[MThemadhatter]

Well I will just sheet the rear upper sides of the fuse.........

 

I must be missing something here because TN is expecting you to do a lot of bending balsa sheet around compound curves on this build. I am getting used to the smell off ammonia now but I think the only real solution is strip planking. And I have now got through 6 sheets of really nice balsa so I need to order more

[MThemadhatter]

Ok I think I have worked out how to do this now. I had a look at the sadly late Vance Moshers build thread for his westland whirlwind which has a similar tail section.

 

We wraps full sheets around the rear fuse, I had cut mine to shape Here is his description of what he did.

 

"Next step was to preform a large enough sheet of 3/32 (2mm) balsa to cover half of the bottom. I use a "Windex" type window cleaner spray bottle for this, with the window cleaner in it, of course. This stuff all has ammonia in it and softens balsa very nicely. I wetted only one side and curled it, and then taped it in that shape and let it dry."

 

"I started working my way back along the fuselage, gluing as I went. I started gluing on each former at about the side-to-side centre of the sheet and worked my way out to the crutch and the bottom keel, holding the wood tight to the formers and the keel and crutch as I went. This involved a lot of leaning over and looking into the fuselage from the back side. I just now got the last of the glue out of my hair, or rather I got a large part of the rest of my hair off my head, with glue in it. I can't really afford to do that.

Things got trickier toward the tail, but I was able to get about 3/4 of the way back before I had to do anything different.

At that point, I resorted to more glass cleaner and a couple of clamps, and then a couple more clamps. You can't see the glass cleaner, and for all I know there are even a few clamps that aren't visible. I lost count. "

So when the new sheets of soft balsa turn up I am going to have another go.. wish me luck lol

[Danny Fenton]

It was a very sad day when the modelling world lost Vance. I enjoyed his builds immensely and the Whirlwind was a real cracker. Very sad that he never saw it finished.

 

The one thing I would say here is that the model Vance designed and is referring to was very large, and the curves were more gradual simply because of the size. Yours is smaller and therefore the curves are more agressive.

 

I use ammonia and wrap balsa around shapes while they dry to get them close, but I would certainly think of planking the curves, or at least part of them.

 

oh and good luck

 

Cheers

Danny

[MThemadhatter]

Thanks Danny

 

There are sections that I will be planking, the nose and chin sections. I found that if I aling the balsa grain with the slope of the rear deck then it conforms much better to the shape with out he "waves" in the structure I got yesterday. Well if it was easy everyone would do it LOL and I have to learn some how. I am very temtped to build Vance's Wyvern in the future and its the "Dream" build at the moment. At around £600 for all the plans, GF parts, instructions, details, spinners and CNC cut bits it will stay like that for a while LOL

 

 

Probably going to leave it alone till next week as the weather looks good for flying this weekend.

[MThemadhatter]

I got the sheeting prepared for one side this morning, waiting for some extra wood to do the other side.

 

Here is the wood wetted and wrapped around the fuse, note the direction of the grain matches the slope of the rear deck

 

I then went in from the other side and marked where the fuse side cam up to. I then removed the sheet and carefully trimmed it. It looks much better with no evidence of buckling along the side. At least I know how to do it properly now

 

In other news my RDS bits arrived last week.

 

They are very nice , and look very strong. The shaft needs to be trimmed and wiper silver soldered in.

 

I also got hold of a couple of prop adapters from top props.

 

[Danny Fenton]

Excellent well done. Can you show a close up of the RDS pocket, whats it made from?

All this RDS activity remind me where you got this particulr RDS kit from?

 

Cheers

Danny

[MThemadhatter]

Hi Danny , I will take some close up tomorrow. I got the bits from here along with a silver solder kit RDS not particularly cheap but worth it for saving the hassle of making it yourself for the first time. There is a lot of info on that web site and links. This one is the set up instructions/guide RDS Version 2

[Danny Fenton]

Ahh wasn't sure it was the IRFMachineworks stuff. You are right it is a bit pricey. I was going to order some but my home made setup will hopefully work as well. The generation two stuff you point to is quite a leap forward with the sliding hex couplers. Should make alligning ailerons when the pocket is not on the hinge line easier.

 

Cheers

Danny

[MThemadhatter]

Ok whilst the glue on the sheeting was curing earlier I got out the wing ribs and started looking at the assembly of the wing. I want to get the skeleton of the wing built over the plan before it starts getting to hot in the loft LOL.

 

The first snag is that TN drew the plans with metric spa's and of course the wood you can buy is all imperial. No problem I thought, I can sandwich the ribs and file out the spa slots to the right size. So I got the ribs out and put them other the plan.

 

Can you see the problem ? I thought at first I had laid the ribs out wrong but no, R4 and R6 are drawn incorrectly on the plan. Also it looks like they forgot to put in the rear spa slots on R1 and R2. Oh well I wanted that spa slotting tool. As a consequence I will have to re-engineer them. Luckily I can stick the little square bit of balsa cut out for the spa's back in. Why did I not buy a Topflight kit LOL

 

[Danny Fenton]

That doesn't look terribly good The reason we buy laser cut parts is so we don't have to do all this....... I hope this is picked up on, and the cutting file amended. Don't get me wrong, I am very grateful to Tony for producing these drawings, but I had hoped he might join in with the build blogs a little more. I know it takes time, and I know how busy he is, but compared to Peter, Lindsay and Tim the after plan support is not so good.

One of the bulkheads on the Spitfire was also incorrect. It was scaled up in one axis but not the other.

 

I am surprised you cannot get your spars in metric sizes? I must confess I use a balsa stripper so there is no problem. Not good if the spars are hardwood though

 

Cheers

Danny

[MThemadhatter]

To be fair to Belair they can only cut what is shown on the plan and TN said that it had not been test built yet from parts cut from the CAD files.

 

The spar size is a little annoying I can only find them in imperial sizes. For example the main spa TN says 9mmx9mm and suggests 3/9x3/8 for the right size and from slec that is

 

Spruce Strip 9.5 x 9.5 x 1220mm (3/8 x 3/8 x 48")

 

 

I am glueing on the second layer of the sides ATM.

 

[MThemadhatter]

The sides are now laminated, in this pic the forward section of the ply wing seat doublers are being glued in place.

 

I used 3M 77 spray glue to laminate the sides and it made the job nice and easy and is very strong.

 

Some more pics of the sheeting and straight nose section !!

 

Because I botched the first go of the sheeting the rear side sections I did not have a nice join between the fuse sides and sheeting so I have filled the gap with some filler. I use aliphatic glue and mirco balloons in a 1 to 2 ratio

 

It drys hard, sands easily and is stronger than red devil filler.

 

Tomorrow I am going to put the plans for the wing on the worktop and continue doing bits and pieces on the fuse as I don't need to jig it or work off the plans any more. I have the two formers to put in and I will start on the removable cockpit section

[MThemadhatter]

Wing building has commenced

 

The wings are built over the plan, the dividers are there so I can check the dimensions as the left side is a mirrored copy of the plan and is there as a guide. All the measurements are taken off the original blue plan.

 

Modifying the ribs was a lot easier than I thought due to two of the most useful tools I have never bought. I have used spruce spars with slightly thinner ones at the back to give more room for the flap control rods. I might web them to make them a little stronger. My patch is rough so I am using spruce for the extra strength as it is only about 50gr heavier. The outer wings will be using obiechi spars. I figure the centre section has to deal with all the stresses.

Which are two spar off cuts with sand paper glued to one side, and you have the perfect size spar slotter

 

I am building the centre section first

I will finish off the spar webs and fit the two dihedral braces next. I will then sheet the top of the wing as those ribs are fragile and I have already hat to fix some hanger rash. I am going to strengthen the trailing edge with some 1\64 birch ply.

 

Just to give an idea of what it will all look like here are the nacelles propping up the wing.

 

The wing dihedral for the outer panels is set with this little jig

I need to cut a slot behind the spars for the brace.

 

I also did some work on the switch plate and cockpit area

The holes are for the magnets and I will use some dowel and holes to locate the cockpit in place.

 

I seem to have more of a plane now!

 

[MThemadhatter]

The pictures of the build this week, slightly curtailed as I have had Flu

 

I have made a start on the outer wing panels. These are constructed flat over the plan, I have lifted them off to check that they are the same. One thing I have noticed is in the current state they twist easily. I have done the ruler check and was pleased to see that ribs are all correctly positioned. I will pinn them down to the board again and add the spar webbing and TE of the ailerons section. Hopefully this will stiffen them up a bit. I don't really want to sheet the top side until they are joined with centre section as it will make it a lot harder with clamps around the dihedral brace.

 

The centre section now with dihedral braces and flap mounts. You can see in this picture where the back of the nacelles will glue to the wing spars. It occurs to me that if I was to infill with balsa between the spars I will have much larger surface area for the glue joint, worth doing ??

 

Here are the flaps built. They are made from 1.5mm birch ply and balsa ribs but are still a bit flexible and heavy for my liking. They could realy do with a spar about halfway down to stiffen them up like this

Rounding off the LE with soft balsa and hard ply was fun !!

 

I have also been slowly finishing off the sheeting on the fuse.

 

[MThemadhatter]

Looking at the pics I have realised that I will have to sheet the top of the outer wing panels before joining them with the centre section, or the inner to ribs will fall off when I cut the slot for the dihedral brace

[MThemadhatter]

Well its been a while since my last update and progress has been a little slow due to various reasons

 

I have decided to focus on the wing for the moment and I have been working on the outer wing panels.

 

 

 

I added the wing tips then partially shaped them, I then added the bottom sheeting.

 

And cut the slots of the dihedral brace and test fitted them. Two thing struck me whilst doing this. Firstly how big the wing is This will be one of the biggest models I have owned once finished and that the outer rib of the centre section on the left side was inexplicably at the wrong angle for the dihedral I have had to carefully remove it and put right. I have no idea how this happened.

I have also done some work on the set-up of the flaps.

 

And have worked out the best way of getting it to work

 

Here is a quick video of it working

All this seems to take far longer to do than you would expect as I had to work out the design of the bits.

Next it will be time to build the ailerons.

Edited By MThemadhatter on 13/05/2011 00:00:26

[Tim Mackey]

Looks great, and welcome back