GREAT PLANES EXTRA 300S, 60 SIZE, ELECTRIC CONVERSION, 2019 BUILD ALONG

[Chuppster]

Did you use a long 2x4 and a sandpaper belt?

 

[nhk750]

Great Planes 22" sanding bars and a razor plane. It's weird building a tapered wing, I'm not sure I like building it all that much, but it does look cool. Thank god I'm just about done with it...

 

[nhk750]

Working on the wing tips installation tonight. Great Planes has you install a rectangular balsa piece then wants you to sand them down to fit...crazy, that is a lot of sanding! So, I traced the shape on the wood with a pencil then cut out the general wing outline from the wood with a keyhole saw, then glued to the wing tip. That will save a lot of sanding later.

This is what the wingtip looks like before sanding. Here you can see it propped against the wall while the other side is being glued.

 

[nhk750]

Finished the wing and did a preliminary sanding, the final sanding will be done right before covering. It came out great! Now on the building the ailerons...

 

[TooJung2Die]

Nice wing. Smooth and straight.

 

[nhk750]

And the fun continues with aileron building.

 

[nhk750]

Got one aileron finished and the other one on the building board, I will sand the bevels on the LE's and hinge all the control surfaces towards the end of the building process, as I really want to get the fuselage building. For me, building the fuse and engineering the electric conversion is one of the funner parts of the building process.

 

[nhk750]

Finished up the ailerons last night and now it's time to clean up the build board, and area, to get ready for the meat and potatoes part of the build...THE FUSELAGE! There's a whole lot of control surfaces laying around, waiting for somewhere to go...

 

[Grifflyer]

Just read through the whole thread and your build is coming along nicely!!

 

[nhk750]

Ready to build Fuse. I needed a white surface under the plan protector for a center line drawn and used some upside down wrapping paper, it seemed appropriate.

 

[nhk750]

I had to show some progress. Been flying and the holiday stuff is slowing my building down, but I did manage to get the firewall epoxied together. I consists of three light ply parts that you laminate together to form the firewall.

 

[nhk750]

It's a Christmas miracle, the motor mount I selected (Great Planes large electric motor mount) for the electric conversion fits perfectly on the pre-marked areas in the firewall. That makes me very happy.

 

[TooJung2Die]

Sometimes the toast falls on the carpet buttered side up.

 

[nhk750]

On the flip side of things, here is a great example of "die crunched" parts. The fuse sides and parts are going to need some work after assembly to fill in some crumbling around the edges. As I was sanding and prepping the parts for assembly, they were crumbling around the edges, as expected, for "die crunched" lite ply parts. A little balsa filler and patients and you will never be able to tell.

 

[nhk750]

Getting some work done today, off work for a few days.

 

[nhk750]

Getting some formers glued in and thinking ahead on the conversion process. I have a general idea on how I'm going to make the battery hatch on top of the fuse and where the battery tray will go now. It does look that there is a lot of room to work with in this large fuselage.

 

[nhk750]

Had some fun tonight and worked on the power system a bit while the glue dries on stage one of the fuse build. This part of the power system was really easy, I just drilled out some holes in the Great Planes motor mount a little larger, to mount the motor, and set the spacing from the firewall to the rear of the Tru-Turn spinner at 6 1/4" (per instructions), and tightened it all down. When I do a conversion I just mount the motor at the same distance from firewall as the instructions require for a gas motor. I love the GP motor mounts for this as they are so adjustable.

Back to the fuse, I'm seeing this fuse is a little tricky to get together and it looks like gluing the fuse sides in stages is the way to go (per instructions), so I used some Titbond III for the first stage which is the front edges of the sides to the top part. The next step will be to wet the front portion of the sides so you can bend them around the front formers (thats why I used waterproof Titebond III).

 

[nhk750]

I decided to use epoxy to glue the sides onto the curved formers. The directions do say to use either CA (I always use Titebond II) or epoxy. I figured 30 min epoxy would cure faster and hold the sides better in this case.

 

[nhk750]

Throwing everything but the kitchen sink at this so the long sides glue (Titebond II) on straight.

 

[nhk750]

Im struggling to get this fuse perfectly square as I had the left side with a small angle on the edge. But with verticle presses, clamps, and everything else I could think of I think It is getting square. We will see once the glue dries for a few hours. It seems like, no matter how hard I try, there is always a slight imperfection in the fuses I build. Probably not noticeable to anyone else and doesn't affect flight, but I know its there...