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The Whispering Death


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I have glassed the bottom of the wing this morning
 
First I cut and placed the GF on the wing and weighed it down with clothes-pegs
 

I then used a roller to apply the resin

 
This work really well , and helps to spread it round very evenly with out snagging the cloth. The only thing is about 1\3 of the epoxy I mixed up ended up in the roller . It took about 80gr or 1/3 of the yoghurt pot in the top picture to do the whole underside of the wing (not counting what was in the roller)
 

Now just got to wait for it to cure and then do the top. This should be a lot easier as I can just lay the sheet of GF over the wing and but out what I need, no templates and cursing
 
 
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Ok the bottom had cured by this morning so I trimmed of the excess, feathered down the edges and put the top sheet of GF on
 

I don't know what other peoples experience of the light weight cloth is but I find it next to impossible to entirely avoid disturbing the weave as I lay out and flatten the cloth over the wing, you can just see where it got moved here

 
Of course you cant see this once you stick it down
 
 
Again I am impressed with the roller, it seem to put on just the right amount to stick the glass down, spreads it around evenly and soaks up an excess.
 
 
I will leave it in this state until I have sorted out the retracts, and belly pan and put the finish on.
 
Now the question is what to do,
 
Fill the weave with primer ?
 
Or put a second "flow" coat of epoxy on ?
 
What are the advantages disadvantage of each ?
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Been hacking into the nacelles and fitting the landing on one side
 


I carved away the rib and reinforced it with some ply, would have been much easier to do this before building it lol


And this is how far it will poke out, which won't be to much. You can see to pencil lines (just) on the side of the nacelle. The lower one is the scale size of the gear doors, the upper one would be the "easy" size for them. Not sure what to go for at the moment.
 
Here is a short video of the Lado retracts in action on a flat 6v battery.
 
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  • 2 weeks later...
  • 1 month later...

Well there has been a bit of a pause in building the last 6 weeks or so secret Due to good weather, planes being fixed after being flown in good weather and overtime. Also this new toy

 
I also picked this up
 
 
But balsa bashing has now resumed. I have decided to get the fuse to the point of ready to be glassed as it is showing signs of a little hanger rash.
 
So I have fitted the wing to the fuse, reinforced the floor of the battery bay and finished sheeting the nose section
 
 
I have laminated up several layers of balsa and cut the nose cone from them
 
 
Now there is just a lot sanding again. I placed a piece of ply in the nose side profile shape to stop me taking to much off.
 
 
Starting to look like something that will fly smiley
 
The next thing to tackle is the tail plain seat
 
 
At the moment the fin will attatch at the front and back with horziontal stab sitting on the fuse sides.
 
 
There is not a lot of support there so I have two ideas. One is to add some 1.5mm ply doublers that reach down to the thick part of the fuse sides for added support. The other is to remove the upper part of the fuse sides as far as the front of the wing and place a block of blue foam there. Then cut the slot for the fin and make a seat for the horizontal stab. Which do you guys think would be better/lighter ?

Edited By MThemadhatter on 14/04/2012 20:26:07

Edited By MThemadhatter on 14/04/2012 20:32:50

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Finished shaping off the nose today. Suddenly added a lot of character to the plane wink

 

I have also been looking at motors. A few pages ago I was testing the motors and I was not completely happy with results, in particular the pitch speed. So I have been looking at alternative motors and have found the following ones

Turnidgy 5045 650Kv

Turnidgy 5055 700Kv

 

Thumper 5045 720Kv

 

So the choice is effectively between My original motors that are 620Kv and 650, 700 and 720Kv. I am kind of leaning towards the tornado thumpers at 720Kv and as usual there is no real prop data for any of these angry

Edited By MThemadhatter on 17/04/2012 13:00:37

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Well I have ordered one of the thumper motors to try out blush hopefully it should be ok.

The next two jobs are not ones I like but I need to get on with them.

The first is to accuratly cut the tail plane seat so that the tail plane incidence is correct. Now there is no info on the plan to say what it should be frown In the build the article TN mentions that on the original one he built, the tail plane incidence was out and he adjusted it on the new plans.

Now I am guessing here that the incidence should be 0 degrees ?

After that I have the wing fillets to make. Question is build the fillets then glass the fuse or the other way round ?

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I had a look at the one they are rebuilding at Flying Legends a couple of years ago, would be nice to see it fly smiley

I have made some more progress

The top of the fuse is now the right shape and I have made the over landing gear

As you can see in the first pic I have started on the fillets, and then cheated a little and simplified them. I started off making them exactly scale and then realised this was a bit ambitious for my first set of wing fillets, and scratch built at that crook

So i settled on these

As you can see I straightened the forward sections out a to simplify things. The full size ones are very curvy. The next thing to do is to put the curves into the ribs and skin them. I am not entirely sure how to go about this so I have left it to another day embarrassed

The radio was switched on a the start of building so it took me 3-1/2 hours to get this far crook

Now to some electrical strangeness. I tested the Thumper 5045- 720Kv motor with the same ESC, Lipos and props as I did with the Emax 4020 620Kv (roughly equivalent to a 5055 580Kv).

And got nearly identical RPM and current results, So 2 motors with a 100Kv difference give identical results ?? Anyone got any ideas what is going on ?

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I have got some more work done laugh

The fillets have been skinned, a little more filling and sanding to be done on them

I have cut the hole of the rear canopy and shaped said canopy to the fuse

I have also made a start on the removable cockpit which will have the switches underneath it

I need to finish glassing the rear tail and fin before setting the tail plane incidence and glueing them together. So I decided to start putting the flow coat on the wing smile p

I made sure I put on enough epoxy to fill the weave and no more. It looked good to begin with but I had a look a minute ago and could see some of the dreaded pin holes appearing. This was despite sealing the bare balsa before laying the glass on. Oh well that's what filling primer and putty is for crook

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It looks a bit better now, however I am wondering if I put enough resin on for the flow coat. When I put it on the surface was flat and shiny, now it's cure you can just see the pattern of the weave underneath. Having never done this before I don't know if this is good or bad.

One cockup though, I must have pushed the brush to hard on the leading edge, when I flipped the wing over I had this


angry

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Have done the other side of the wing now,

I put a smidge more resin on this side and it looks ok.

I tested a section that will be under the belly pan

I flattened it back a little and seems ok. I then deliberatly went to far so I could see what it looks like when you get to the weave. You can just see the spot in the centre.

So now that the tail surfaces are done its time to check and set the tail plane incidence before gluing them together.

I fixed the tail feathers to the airframe temporaly

With horizontal stab sitting on the tail plane seat I cut I get -1 degree incidence


With leading edge of the horizontal stab resting on the bottom of the vertical stab I get -1/2 degree incidence. I am not sure what it is supposed to be so might have to email TN.

I also checked the wash out and, phew there is 3 degrees at each wing tip

And lastly I could not resist it

My plan of action now is to glue the horizontal and vertical stab together, adjust the tail plane seat to match and finish off the rear of the fuse. Then fill any dents and put some glass on the fuse. I will then return to the undercarriage doors. Once I have them done and the fuse glassed I will start flattening.

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  • 3 weeks later...

Its the weekend, lovely hot sunny day, not a cloud in the sky and 20-40mph wind angry

So time for some sanding and an update wink

I have glued the tail feathers together and adjusted the tail plane seat so that everything is square and the incidences are correct. I also reinforced the seat a little with 1.5mm ply doubler. I then tidied up a few bits and pieces like the snake exits and prepped the fuse for glassing.


Its amazing what shapes you can get the cloth to conform to.

And on to the sanding, I was correct in that the bottom of the wing could have done with a little more resin in the flow coat. I managed to go through the weave at one high spot. How do you remedy this ? or do you just spray the primer other it ?

I am about 95% there with the initial sanding down of the wing ready for primer and I must say I am quite impressed with the finish I have got

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