Wing to Fuse - Gear - Firewall - Control horns
I mounted the wing to the fuse as instructed. I thought that was going to be a much bigger hurdle. But it went real smooth.. Verified squareness of wing etc and glued it up..
The gear was very cool to assemble. At first I was not so sure how it would turn out. I have seen Mike's
video of his gear test, I knew it would be built to with stand pounding but the assembly process was new to me.
I followed the directions carefully bent the wire as needed, cut the heat shrink tubing, mixed the epoxy and got the heat gun ready and carbon fiber ready. I put the epoxy on the carbon fiber layed the wire in it shoved the heat shrink tubing over the whole setup and shot it with some heat. WOW this is cool, epoxy shot out, I made to much.. Oh well, when the tubing shrunk up. That setup is solid. I am definitely going to do that style on other planes. Tnx Mike!!! Did the same for the other gear with same results.. Very nice.
Slid the wheels on the wire and bent the axel up and snipped off the excess.. I am a big wheel kinda guy so I bent the wire up leaving a little more room if I want to add larger wheels. And I probably will.
I cut the circle in half did a test fit and and had to shave some of the flat side off to get it to fit snug into the slot in the fuse. No biggie. Made more epoxy, dabbed it as instructed on the slots and the inner face plate of the circle, shoved the 2 pieces into the slot and then set the CF gear through the wing into the slots.
Used some close pins just to be sure the half circles stayed put. I had trouble getting one strut in the groove. Got a tad stressed
when I thought the epoxy was setting up fast. But just used a little muscle and forced it in. The first side went very well but the second, well I was starting to sweat a bit.
My gear does toe in as the instructions say, not great but good enough. Gotta remember to get out of the perfectio mode..... And it does have some camber in the correct direction. I also put some foam safe CA around the holes and struts coming through the wings.
The firewall went as instructed. I did have to CA a quarter of the foam backing back on, it fell off and was no big deal to fix. I mixed some epoxy and again made too much, placing it in the slots. I let it set momentarily and then used a Q-tip to clean the excess drippings out of the center hole. Solid fit as all the parts have been.. This is truly a well designed plane...!!!
I then glued with CA all 4 of the control horns in place. You can see the aileron horns in a pix below.
I really like stearable tailwheels. So I rigged something up similar to other planes I have built. Just took some used piano wire and used an extra Slow Stick wheel. I just stuck it in the foam of the rudder after bending it 45 degrees or so. Put a dab of CA and let it sit.. So far so good.
Pix follow...
NOTE/apology: I have noticed my pix have been a tad out of focus.. Next plane, as I have all the pix for this plane done, I will work on getting better, in focus shots.
Firewall installation
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Gear assembly
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Circle/gear holder
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Struts 1 view
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Struts 2 view
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Gear straight on view
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Gear quartering view
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Gear Lower Wing view
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Tail Wheel mod view
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AIM - rcparkflyers
