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Bertie Bassett Flying Flea


reg shaw
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Its been a bit quiet on here recently, its been a bit boring, stripping the fuselage of all its fitings ready for covering. The wings are all covered, stitched, taped and doped, one of shrinking dope then two non shrinking and they are now ready for the silver dope. The fuselage is covered and the edges taped, ready for the reassembly to begin and the radio installation. I'm hoping to paint all of the fittings before I refit them all. In readiness for the engine starting, I've made up the exhausts and also the intake manifold though I have to redo that as I copied the mountings on my Austin, then found the Carden Ford method :'' :banghead: The new intake manifold can wait if it has to though as it is not now essential to the exhaust mountings. As you can see, the exhaust pipes go through into the 'cylinder head', these I can tweak for quietness and back pressure if required. Also started the final clean up of my fabulous welding, about 40 Dremel discs later..... There's still a bit more welding sculpture to do on the block under the exhausts, just above the bottom sump mounting flange there is a bulge which needs building which gives space for the oil pump, just below where the carburettor is on the real one. The exhaust stack is much too long at this stage, but its obviously a best guess as to how long it should be so I'll leave it long for noo until its all back together to allow a best guess to get it somewhere near!

Ian.

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Cheers folks, Greenacres is a definate for me, whether the Flea makes it that far time will tell!

Painting the metalwork and re assembly begins. These pics are of the control stick. Mignet says just run the pivoting tube through the fuselage sides in a waxed wooden hole. That would mean a right job to get the stuff out again if it needed a looking at, so I oversized the holes and bushed the tube. This means that the tube can be firked in from underneath, then the bushes slid on from the outside, secured from spinning by a brass screw. Then the cranks slide on with a cross bolt to secure. The crank for the servo actuation is the bit with holes in, the big hole has a flared tube soldered in as the rudder cables pass through it between the pullies and joystick. Also finished the U/C set up, all now installed and bungeed up. Also, painted the engine block with high temperature paint and am well chuffed with the crude cast look it has. :D :D

Ian.

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What a grand day out playing toy aeroplanes!! Best news of all though is that the 'other' 1/2 scale Flea took its first flights today. As advised by Mignet in the book, straight fast taxi's first to get the front wing trimmed, then a hop and so on.. First proper hop turned into a circuit and landing, second flight was a bit eventful at first, but settled down to be not quite as scary as the first half. Tweaking in between, Anthony was 'persuaded' (is that how you spell press ganged these days?) as the weather was superb to go again and the final set of tweaks saw the Flea fly unbelievably well, like it had had a good few more flights than three!! A mate videoed the lot but hopefully he'll just show the third!! Down side for me was I folded the wings on my Fournier, got it down safely but new joiner tube required!!

Ian.

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Here you go a few pics of yesterday's event, video to follow.

Get it started

Nervous Me !

Off we go then

No No the other way

That's better

up & away

Steady now

That's the way to do it

In for a landing

& relax

This post is shamelessly stolen from Dave P, cheers Dave P!!

 

Ian.

Edited By reg shaw on 05/05/2014 07:59:40

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This weekends test flight doesn't look too promising as the weather is carp at best!! But, the Carden Ford seems to work a treat!! Nice dull note from the exhausts but I reckon I can close up the inner ends a fair bit as I had my fingers over three outlets, flute stylee and it still seemed to run freely enough. I still haven't done the throttle and choke linkages yet as its my least favourite job of all. The Carden was warm at the bottom manifold side but stayed lukewarm at the head end which is good for noise reduction too apparently, as the gasses too are colder upon exit.

Happy bunny.

Ian.

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