Workshop

Mar 1, 2009 Sunday

The session began with an inspection of the plane and the construction of a list of items to be resolved.

All the hinges on the plane were glued in and the surfaces aligned. This was done by working glue into the holes in the moving surface first and having the hinges set and dried. The second step was to add glue to the holes in the structure and set the surfaces.

The canopy was cut to shape and fitted on the plane. When it was straight and shaped correctly, it was glued on with canopy glue and allowed to dry. The striping was placed around the canopy and the list of things to do was complete.

I will review the plane one more time and the Wednesday meeting in Lineville will give all the members an opportunity to look it over. Below are some shots of the plane in its present form

 

Feb 28, 2009 Saturday

The cockpit area was first on the list, I made the trap door and planked the inside area.

The construction of the hatch and cockpit was completed and the last of the yellow was used to cover the hatch assembly. It was improved for fit on the fuse and then the cockpit was masked and painted.

Next the cowl was mounted on the plane and checked for alignment. The line between the white lower area and the top yellow was marked on the cowl and it was then removed. The cowl was masked and painted with several coats of yellow and allowed to dry.

The line between the yellow and the white was taped with black the same size as the line on the fuse. The cowl was then assembled with the muffler and spinner and it is in the final configuration

The Ignition system was mounted inside the fuse so that the spark plug wire was routed properly inside.

The stabs and elevators were completed by spending some time with the covering and making adjustments on the hinges. The stabs were then assembled to the fuse and a problem emerged with the stab tube in the fuse. Since there were many folks working on the plane, the stabs were not straight with the wings and we did not notice the problem un till late in the build. The stabs fit to the fuse very well, but they were not properly aligned with the wings. I checked the wings and stabs for tramble and incidence and all was well, and the stab tube was securely glued into the holes in the fuse. The stabs were built to be removable so the alignment of the tube and incidence pins would be the factor that determined where the stabs would be located. After studying the problem, I decided to revise the stabs and make them non-removable since a 50cc plane is not large enough to really need that function. I reduced the diameter of the stab tube to create some slop in the position of the stab and then built up the bottom of the tube on one side and the top on the other. After some adjusting and dry fitting the stabs were straight and the entire assembly was glued in place with epoxy.

The tail wheel assembly was bolted to the fuse and the tiller arm was measured for setting the pivot in the bottom of the rudder. The pivot was glued in place and the tail wheel assembly was complete

The wheel pants were then examined and ply pads glued into the inside.

The shafts and wheels were fit into the pants and the pants were mounted to the gear in position so that they looked good on the plane. The pants were then removed and painted white. Once dry, they were final assembled to the plane.

I set the parts of the plane together to see how the colors were progressing and added the Galaxy lettering on the fuse between the wings and stab. Other trim items will wait for the opinion of the club .

 

Feb 27, 2009 Friday

I continued to work on the fuse and the new design started to take shape. The rudder was covered in black instead of yellow ( don't have enough of the right yellow). The rest of the system was developed to follow the lines of the rest of the plane.

The rudder and fin were done and then the bottom of the fuse was covered. Striping was added to clean up the curves and the design began to look pretty good.

Next the cowl was final sanded and painted white since most of the area will now be white. It needed 2 coats of paint to get the surface we wanted. It was left to dry for 24 hours before taping it off for the yellow.

Feb 26, 2009 Thursday

I got the plane in the workshop and inspected it to identify the list of things that need to be done by next Wednesday.

The first task was to complete the covering of the wings and stripe the the joints. This was done and the wings came out very well. Below you can see the top side of the wings and the colors and proportions look very nice.

The bottom of the wings are shown below and they will be just fine.

Next I looked at the problem with having two different colors of yellow on the plane. I looked on the Topflight web site and found that there are just two colors of yellow and I have the one marked "Yellow" and therefore the second color (Cub Yellow) would be the second yellow on the plane. I went to the LHS and got a roll of Cub Yellow and a can pf spray paint for the cowl.

Upon returning to the shop I saw the Cub Yellow was wrong wrong wrong. It is way darker and just not close. The conclusion is that both of the colors we have are the "Yellow" color but one roll was from Ed's stock and it was made to put on Lindbergh's plane for the flight to Europe. Over time the color must have changed.

Since I did not have enough of the right colors to do the original color scheme, I then spent time designing a new layout that could be done with the materials I had in the shop. I completed the redesign and began cutting covering to be put on the fuse.

The fuse began as shown above with white about 1/2 way up the sides. Since there was very little of the correct yellow available, I covered the rest of the side with white and the joint for the yellow and black will be higher than we planned at first.