mayan
Legendary member
Watching all these big projects that FT is always working on has made me want to do a big project myself. I originally planned to do this project during summer vacation with my kids but considering that the schools here are closed and we are all locked down at home because of the CoronaVirus, I decided to do this build now and make it our quarantine build. The plans have already been tiled and waiting for the summer to arrive, so all I really had to do is pull them out and start attaching them to FB. Excluding the glider wing set I managed to tightly fit all the pieces onto 3.5 sheets of 100x70 cm FB.
While taping the plans to FB I realised that the fuselage would not fit onto one sheet of foam no matter how I rotated it. Alright so I have to tile the fuselage during the build, but now I have to decide which part to cut short the tail boom or the front section. I decided to go with the tail boom section because it should have less impacts and thus has less chances of breaking, plus I have done the same with my Spitfire and it worked well.
I was initially going to use 10mm FB to avoid having to adjust the cavities to work with 5mm but after advising with @Hai-Lee and checking the stores stock of 10mm FB, I was left with no options but to use 5mm FB; so the next thing to do was to adjust the cavities. I adjusted the cavities on the required fuselage pieces, plugged in two hot glue guns, just to be sure I have enough hot glue flowing and began to build
.
The first thing that I had to do is attach the trimmed fuselage tail boom section to the main fuselage section, with some tape and hot glue. Folding the rest of the fuselage was pretty easy, and seems pretty solid without any re-enforcement done to it; unlike what I have been warned from. I did have a few mistakes done to the tail boom cutting the slots a little too big so I cut out some pieces of foam to fix the mistake. I also forgot to put in the push rod supporters before closing up the fuselage, something that on the original TT would have been an issue; luckily here I had enough room to put my hand inside to glue the push rod supporters in place.
Next I started building the nose section, which I totally messed up with. Although I have been warned I didn’t properly think things through. First I forgot that the sides of the nose should be 10mm so when attaching it to the fuselage I had a 5mm gap between the sides of the nose section and the fuselage, I fixed this by cutting the extra nose side plate sections and glued them in place. Next I forgot that the doublers are also 10mm and that with the sides that should also be 10mm I am looking at 20mm, now considering my sides are 5mm I was short by 15mm of FB. I didn’t think it through all the way and found myself cutting the missing doublers a few times, each time messing up something else, until I eventually got it figured out.
This is the nose section without the added side plates and doublers.
On to the wing. Usually this is something that I tackle first on most builds, but here since I had to think of how to re-enforce it I left it for later. Also here I made a few mistakes, the first being the spar height which I left the same as in the original model 5mm where I should have used 10mm; this obviously gave me a thinner wing profile which would be good for speed and less for lift. The second mistake that I made was that I didn’t add enough re-enforcement to the wing in general, but especially not to the outer 2/3 of the wing. I did reinforce the main wing join with a piece of CF rod that I found laying around. Unfortunately I realised these mistakes only after I have already glued the wing close, but was luckily able to open it back up again using a big kitchen knife. Fixed the mistakes by adding another layer of foam to the spars and also some BBQ skewers in between the 2/3 of the wing to the wing tip for extra re-enforcement and closed the wing back up again.
I went ahead and weighed the bird without electronics or battery before making a few changes and the weight came in at 892g. After weighing it I have made a few changes and also started painting the wings and nose so I assume the bare weight went up by at least another 50-100g. I am also still missing all the electronics which should up the weight by around roughly 400-600g, but I am in no rush to put them in because I can’t fly anyhow and even if I do I want to make sure all my friends come to see the maiden of this big boy.
More about the maiden when the lock down in Israel will be released...
While taping the plans to FB I realised that the fuselage would not fit onto one sheet of foam no matter how I rotated it. Alright so I have to tile the fuselage during the build, but now I have to decide which part to cut short the tail boom or the front section. I decided to go with the tail boom section because it should have less impacts and thus has less chances of breaking, plus I have done the same with my Spitfire and it worked well.
I was initially going to use 10mm FB to avoid having to adjust the cavities to work with 5mm but after advising with @Hai-Lee and checking the stores stock of 10mm FB, I was left with no options but to use 5mm FB; so the next thing to do was to adjust the cavities. I adjusted the cavities on the required fuselage pieces, plugged in two hot glue guns, just to be sure I have enough hot glue flowing and began to build
.
The first thing that I had to do is attach the trimmed fuselage tail boom section to the main fuselage section, with some tape and hot glue. Folding the rest of the fuselage was pretty easy, and seems pretty solid without any re-enforcement done to it; unlike what I have been warned from. I did have a few mistakes done to the tail boom cutting the slots a little too big so I cut out some pieces of foam to fix the mistake. I also forgot to put in the push rod supporters before closing up the fuselage, something that on the original TT would have been an issue; luckily here I had enough room to put my hand inside to glue the push rod supporters in place.
Next I started building the nose section, which I totally messed up with. Although I have been warned I didn’t properly think things through. First I forgot that the sides of the nose should be 10mm so when attaching it to the fuselage I had a 5mm gap between the sides of the nose section and the fuselage, I fixed this by cutting the extra nose side plate sections and glued them in place. Next I forgot that the doublers are also 10mm and that with the sides that should also be 10mm I am looking at 20mm, now considering my sides are 5mm I was short by 15mm of FB. I didn’t think it through all the way and found myself cutting the missing doublers a few times, each time messing up something else, until I eventually got it figured out
.This is the nose section without the added side plates and doublers.
On to the wing. Usually this is something that I tackle first on most builds, but here since I had to think of how to re-enforce it I left it for later. Also here I made a few mistakes, the first being the spar height which I left the same as in the original model 5mm where I should have used 10mm; this obviously gave me a thinner wing profile which would be good for speed and less for lift. The second mistake that I made was that I didn’t add enough re-enforcement to the wing in general, but especially not to the outer 2/3 of the wing. I did reinforce the main wing join with a piece of CF rod that I found laying around. Unfortunately I realised these mistakes only after I have already glued the wing close, but was luckily able to open it back up again using a big kitchen knife. Fixed the mistakes by adding another layer of foam to the spars and also some BBQ skewers in between the 2/3 of the wing to the wing tip for extra re-enforcement and closed the wing back up again.
I went ahead and weighed the bird without electronics or battery before making a few changes and the weight came in at 892g. After weighing it I have made a few changes and also started painting the wings and nose so I assume the bare weight went up by at least another 50-100g. I am also still missing all the electronics which should up the weight by around roughly 400-600g, but I am in no rush to put them in because I can’t fly anyhow and even if I do I want to make sure all my friends come to see the maiden of this big boy
.
More about the maiden when the lock down in Israel will be released...
