Progress report #1
Long time coming, eh?
So I managed to solder some battery leads together to make a y-harness for my ESC's. Correct me if I'm wrong, but should I cut one of the negatives from the ESCs? I heard this keeps the Bec at the correct voltage, but I'm nervous to stick a blade where it shouldn't be.
And speaking of wires, some bad news. I tested out my soldering job, and both motors spun! But when I went to hook up some servos to test them, I realized:
i only have the one servo harness, and not enough servo leads to make any more.
Hindsight, eh?
Back to the progress report, though. I am happy to report that I have the entire hatch glued and skinned. If anyone was confused about my little rant about the "small details", hopefully the following pictures will shed some light.
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Here you can see the "extras" taped to the formers. This will make sure I get the right OUTSIDE radius of the skin peices.
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The "extras" removed.
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All skinned!
The tape is to make sure that the foam isn't eaten by the aerosols in the spraypaint. I'll be running some along the bottom so it doesn't eat at the foam along the sides. Added bonus, it'll mask the creases, making it look that much smoother.
Next, because I loose motivation quickly, I decided to glue the empennage together. I don't want to talk about how much it weighs (78g!!), But she looks smooth! nerdnic hit upon a gem of an idea when he designed the tapered edges. When I was folding the elevator over, the paper decided to split (guess I folded too far). So quickfix was to glue in some nylon hinges I had laying around. The tape you see is where I got a little too excited pulling foam out for a carbon fiber spar.
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...but 78 grams! I'm already getting nervous about balance issues. I think I'll go back to the rest of the fuselage formers and cut out some lightening holes, for all the few grams that'll save.
The rudder was fun to work with, too. Because of the nature of skinning with foamcore, I had to glue some cheeks to the bottom of the rudder for the correct outline. I beveled the front for clearance, then carved a decent shape out of the extra foam.
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I probably should have waited until after I skin the tail to carve the cheeks, but given that it'll only be soo thin, I don't think I'll notice it in the air too much, anyway.
So there you have it! First real update. Next progress report should have me glue up the rest of the fuselage, and install some electronics.