Composite Glacial F3A from Lithuania

[Philip Lewis 3]

Is there any interest in seeing a sort of build blog of this, OK, not a traditional build in the balsa sense but not exactly just an assembly either, this is about as much of a build as you can get with a full composite, this is pretty much what comes out of the mould, nothing at all done for you further than that.

[GrumpyGnome]

Yes please.  I'll never build something like that but I am naturally curious.....

[simon barr]

Yes, always interesting to see different builds/assemblies.

[Steve Jones 15]

Yes please from me , I'd be very keen to read this.

Its an expensive model 😮  half the price of my first house. 

[Philip Lewis 3]

14 minutes ago, Steve Jones 15 said:

Its an expensive model 😮  half the price of my first house. 

 

They all are though, that said I only build a new one about every three years which cushions the blow, price above is also ex vat and delivery and it doesn't end there, what goes into it isn't exactly cheap either. 

[Colin Carpenter]

Yes indeed. Fascinating! I buy cars for much less than that and they last years ! 😂😂😂😂

[Learner]

Yes from me, be nice to see something different.

[PDB]

Yes please 👍

[Philip Lewis 3]

OK, lets make a start on this, we get the three central parts in the first photo to form the U/C plate, that central part looks a bit weak to me being a carbon nomex construction so I laminated it with two further 1mm carbon sheets using the part supplied as a template for the U/C bolt holes.

 

Then glue that lot together to form this.

 

 

Then glue into the fuselage itself, 70mm from that former behind.

 

 

While that sets get the legs prepared, one on the right is done the one on the left is yet to be done, basically shorten by 5mm and drill through the two dimpled markers and the third at the very end of that line, then glue blind nuts in place having flattened the spikes back.

 

 

Next up with (trembling hands) is to make the holes in the fusealge sides for the legs to get in, in theory you can measure this but I opted to put a 0.5mm end mill bit (end sharp as a hyperdermic) under the gear plate and punture throught the fusealge side to get a marker for the underside of the gear plate and then gradually enlarge to what is needed, (apologies for the blured picture).

 

  

All done then insert the legs correcting any small errors and check for correct tow in and tow out, now it looks like this.

 

 

View from above.

 

 

 

Sorry, so slow but that's it for now, but slow as some of these laminating epoxies and glues take 24 hours to achieve strenth, next up the two centrally mounted servo's and then the wings need a method to be attached to the fuselage.

  

Edited August 1 by Philip Lewis 3
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[Murat Kece 1]

Hi What glue are you using?

 

[Philip Lewis 3]

Deluxe Materials Aero Tech Epoxy for gluing together and to the fuselage and East Composites Laminating Resin for the lamination, I  like to buy British where I can and these two companies are excellent in every respect.

[Philip Lewis 3]

OK, so onto the wings attaching to the fuselage.

 

First off we have this:

 

 

Which needs to come up from below like this:

 

 

So measuring twice and cutting once mark out where to cut:

 

 

Which then looks like this and then carefully file away where the wing tubes will go and check for fit:

 

 

Bottom wing is similar proinciple, start with this:

 

 

Drill out holes in the fuselage step at the bottom after VERY carefully making sure the holes are in the right place:

 

 

Then check for a good fit and then drill out the holes for the tubes in the wings:

 

 

 

Dry fit to check and breath a sigh of releif when it all lines up:

 

 

A look at the wing tubes glued in, the seam in the fibreglas make drilling centrally a lot easier:

 

 

Assemble dry, check for centrally fited and make sure tip to tail measure the same both sides glue in place and then leave overnight:

 

 

Wing rear mounting:

 

 

Essentially do the same for the top wing, finished view from the top:

 

 

That's basically it for the wings, the fit perfectly and they are square. Next up is the canopy which being about two feet long is going to need five mounting points which might be a tad tricky to line up!

 

 

Edited August 9 by Philip Lewis 3
Delete duplicated photo's

[Philip Lewis 3]

Ok, so on to the canopy fixing, I drilled holes in the canopy like this

 

 

 

Then put the canopy on to the fusealage attched with masking tape in the right position and reached up from underneath to mark out the hole position on the fuselage with a pen and then drilled those out as well.

 

 

Obviosuly the fibreglass is to flimsy to support the rods so they need a wood backing block.

 

 

Then put the canopy on and glue on the opposite backing plates on the fuselage making very sure to not get any glue on the rods themselves.

Next cut a slot in the front to accept the pin from the latch and glue the canopy latch on with wooden ply wedges too give it the right angle to enter a plywood crescent shaped piece of ply glued into the canopy. 

 

 

Thats the boring bits out of the way, I promise it will get (slightly) more interesting from here.

 

[Philip Lewis 3]

This plane uses pull pull on both elevator and rudder, dificult to show but this is the view of the elevator servo from below. The rudder servo is above it.

 

 

That sort of nomex structure doesn't accept screws it just crumbles, so they give you these to glue on top of it to mount the servos's.

 

 

Didn't like that idea so I made my own out of 1mm carbon sheet.

 

That is the rudder servo as shown from above.

 

 

[Philip Lewis 3]

Right, onto the rear stabiliser and rudder, the hole for the stab tube you have to cut yourself, this is the template that helps to make sure it's cut in the right place with the various cuts labelled.

 

 

It's located securely with the triangular ply pieces in the rudder slot and the ply tab goes against where the tailwheel will eventually go.

 

 

 

 

Once that is all cut out the stab tube is very slightly lose in the fuselage so careful alignment with various pins and scraps and before the epoxy sets make sure it's all aligned. The laser line on each tip is circled.

 

 

Onto the wings next.

 

Edited August 29 by Philip Lewis 3

[GrumpyGnome]

Laser.... makes my eyeball, and bit of string, seem positively Neanderthal 🙂

[Philip Lewis 3]

Not just laser, this is a self-levelling laser! 😀

[Philip Lewis 3]

So, onto the wings and tailplane, first job is to cut the slot for the rudder horns in the tailplane, we use this jig, this goes both sides as this is a pull pull system so the horns go both sides.

 

 

 

As the slot goes right through the tailplane the horns top and bottom interlock with easy other.

 

 

 

Next job is to cut out the slots for the servo's in the wings and the horn slot, making absolutely sure to cut them into the right side of the wing, again we have a jig for this.

 

 

A good technique to check where the glassed in supports are with fibreglass is to shine a powerful torch from the other side, you can make out the wood for the servo screws here.

 

 

 

The wings all finished less the wiring and linkages. The white brackets are for the struts to connect to.

 

 

Wings with wiring and linkages all done, MPX plugs used to attach each wing electrically to the receivers outputs.

 

 

 

A close up of the servo linkage, that's a ball raced linkage on the horn end and the two alloy couplers are left and right hand threaded to create a turnbuckle, rod is 3mm carbon and the servo end is a ball link.

 

In this photo it hasn't been adjusted yet, but the servo arm will be set to exactly 90 degrees to the control rod angle of travel by adjusting the PWM centre point and then the turnbuckle mechanically adjusted to centre the aileron with the wing. 

 

 

Next up is the drive installation.

 

[Philip Lewis 3]

Ok then, onto the power side, we got the following front and rear mount parts with it.

 

 

And this is what's going to go into into it.

 

 

A closer look at the drive unit for anyone interested.

 

 

So, after a lot of aligning involving standing the fuselage on it's nose and carefully with an angle guage ensuring it was level in both planes it was tacked in with some cyno, when dry it was all checked again and then epoxied into the nose like this.

 

 

Left that over night and then bolted the rear mounts into place and then epoxied them onto the fuselage sides.

 

 

Alignement looking pretty good.

 

 

Put in the cross rails to support the battery tray, the two carbon rods unerneath are to mount the esc to as that will be in direct airflow from the front.

 

 

ESC mounted.

 

 

Battery tray has grip mat where the bars are and on the top to stop battery slip, it's simply held down with ratchet ties to make it easy to get out.

 

 

A quick look at the pull pull system rining from the centre of the plane down to the tail.

 

[Peter Jenkins]

Jolly glad you're doing this build Phil, I'm almost at the end of my 2nd Anthem build and it's nothing like as complicated!  Good for you to take up the challenge thrown down by Lassi!

[Philip Lewis 3]

To be honest Peter I’ve enjoyed this build more than any other, the templates are absolutely dead right so it’s really not that difficult a job. It’s great to only cut the servo holes to the servo’s you are actually going to use but definitely a plane where you need to do more thinking before any cutting for sure.

 

The finish is light years ahead of anything else I’ve ever owned and dealing with Algirdas in Lithuania was superb, the only (minor) downside being that it was delivered at 4 am! (although to be fair the guy who delivered it knew what it was and obviously took great care of it).

 

I guess an advantage of building the same plane again is you learn from the big and small mistakes of the first one and although sad at the loss of the first one I’m sure you’ll ultimately think the second one is better.

[Duncan Disorderly]

Really interesting build thread Phil - not sure how I missed it before. As much as anything, it explains to me why all the second hand ones I've bought all look like the mice have been at them... You are certainly much braver than I am - I don't think I'd get past measuring for the 600th time before applying a Dremel. Definitely worth a trip to Moreton Pinkney to see it fly when it's finished! I'm going to get my teeth into A-25 over the winter with a Bruckmann Sensation (just to get right up to date... er... not...) as it looks like a lovely schedule.

[Philip Lewis 3]

You be careful Duncan, you'll get sucked in again, although that said the A-25 is a very nice schedule, it flows well.

 

You'll probably see it next year now, I'm mostly there mid week evenings in the (ahem) summer, care to join me?

A25-Manoeuvre-Descriptions.pdf

Edited September 10 by Philip Lewis 3
Spelling

[Philip Lewis 3]

OK, so, putting that altogther I thought you might like to see the finished article.

 

 

 

 

[Peter Jenkins]

Very nice Phil.  Hope the maiden is uneventful.