Next, the battery tray. Remove excess foam, and glue the sides up like so:
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Flip it over and use your attachment method of choice. I like velcro, straps would work as well. Yep, it's crinkled. I stepped on it.
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Slide into the battery area and glue in place. Think I'll alter the size of the tray a bit to make it easier to get into place.
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Cut the paint stick to length. 8.75". I'll include a guide on the plans. You can also trim it to width if you have a super wide stick. These ones from the dollar store are 1" wide. The notches cut out of the front are to accommodate the long shaft that sticks out of the back of the C pack motor. You may not have to do this.
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This is how it will glue up. Make sure it's straight. If the back end of your stick is square, you're probably pretty safe just butting it up against the spar. I'll include lines on the plans for that last rib to aid in alignment.
You're looking for the paint stick to be exactly inline with the body of the plane. If you're off a bit, no big deal, just try and make sure that both sides are the same.
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Here's both sticks glued in place.
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Next split off a section from another paint stick. This is actually quite easy to do by just running a razor blade down the length. I cut my stick here in half, but it would probably have been better to go with a little less. Check out reference pictures 52 & 53 to see why. You can leave it wide, but it may interfere with the final wing rib, which will then require modification.
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You're going to want to cut that split section into a couple pieces.
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I didn't really measure, just cut off enough to do something like this. I used CA to glue these pieces together. Be careful if you have aerosol activator. One bit of mispray bubbled my foamboard. Fortunately, that spot will be covered up by the motor pod skin.
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And the other side. As you can see, I cut a bit of the foam away so I could slide the piece in further. No clue if that's necessary, It's quite likely strong enough even if you don't fit it in. I suppose if you decided to put giant motors on your plane, that a stronger arrangement might be in order. Maybe make some tabs and slots for the paint stick pieces.
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Squirted some hot glue into the cracks on both sides for good measure.
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Next, the bottom skin pieces. I'll include battery doors on both middle sections in the plans so you can choose which side you want to use. Or both. I'd make a hot glue hinge on that door to strengthen it up.
Glue it on the same way you did with the upper skin pieces. Remove paper from the back side.
All of the bottom skin pieces are just slightly over length. So butt them up against the folded over front skin pieces. The back can be trimmed afterwards if needed.
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Glue in the next piece. This piece is curved a bit on either side. I didn't really have a good way to mark it, but you'll be able to tell when you do a test fit. One direction will be flush, the other will leave a gap. Use whatever orientation gives the best fit.
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And, that's about as far as you'll want to go before adding some electronics. I chose to use a splitter power cable as I had one handy, but you could run two batteries if you wanted.
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There is a ton of room inside this plane, so you can route stuff wherever you want. If you want to solder on longer motor wires, you could run the ESC wires through the pod. I chose to come cut a hole instead as it's faster, and very easy to swap motor direction this way. If you're concerned about cooling for your setup, you could place the ESC behind the actual engine air ducts if you wanted. I'm not going to run any cooling for this build. There's lots of room inside the plane, and the 30A esc's have lots of headroom for C pack motors.
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Next, glue in a servo like so. It won't be in exactly this position on the plans, but it'l be close. Changed it after I installed mine. Also make note of the bevel I put on the skin piece circled in red. I cut that bevel a little deep. Stuff will fit better later on if you leave half of the foam thickness for the bevel.
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Do both sides.
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Once your ESC's, wires, and servos are in place, we can put on the 3rd bottom skin piece. It is also beveled. Ignore the other servo hole. Wasn't sure when I cut the parts if I wanted stuff on the top or bottom.
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Glue the skin piece down like normal, except for the red areas. I find it's easier to add glue here after the piece has already been fastened in place.
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And here's why I like to wait. You want to make sure the skins don't curl up or down on the ends. You want them to be straight and inline with each other when all of the bottom pieces are on.
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After all the bottom skin pieces are in place, you can add the final wing rib. I had to modify mine a bit with the tip of my hot glue gun to clearance the paint stick parts that I left a bit wide.
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Here it is glued in place. Do both sides.
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Next, the last 4 skin pieces. All 4 are identical.
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Bevel and clearance like so. You may have to do more or less depending on the size of your paint stick.
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Glue into place.
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You can add a bit more glue to the underside if needed. Also note that I beveled the edge.
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Flip the plane over and do the bottom. Here it is all beveled up.
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Do both sides.
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Next up are the tail section skin pieces.
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Bevel the hinge, and smear in a small amount of hot glue to reinforce it.
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Remove the paper from the back side like so.
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Glue in place.
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You can add addition glue from the bottom side if needed. Also note the bevels I've added to the foam.
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Install servos like so. I just dropped the wires together through the holes in the spars up to my receiver.
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Once the servos are in place, it's time for the bottom tail skin sections. They are beveled just like the top.
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If needed, you can trim away the excess left from the other bottom skin sections. Depending on how much glue you used on the rear spar, fitting the blade between those two pieces makes a nice guide so you get straight cuts.
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It's easiest to glue this in place in two steps. Red first, then green.
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Glue on both sides.
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Next, grab the taileron thingy. Remove paper, bevel and reinforce hinge with glue, then bevel all the show areas. I may have gone overboard with the red lines. That's where I add glue and fold over.
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Once you've glued the pieces together you can start fitting them to the main body. I like to use BBQ skewers here to add additional strength.
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Two short pieces is probably enough. Do a bunch of test fitting to ensure stuff slides together well, then glue together. You want the side tail pieces to stick straight out from the body. If you mess up and one side droops a bit, just make sure the other matches. Don't worry about a perfect fitup either. On the real plane there is a decent gap in the skin between the main plane and these sections.
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Do both sides.
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