Zephyrus from down under

[VinceC]

Underside of front fuselage is sheeted with 1.5mm ply

[VinceC]

The Zephyurs has finally grown a tail. The span of the tailplane is 1 meter, so that gives you an idea of the size of the model

[Jus Gordon]

Lovely work.

[ARUP]

Agreed! It's a shame the structure will get covered.

[VinceC]

Don't do as I do.......

What a mess I got myself into. I needed to create a fibre glass fairing to replicate the one on the underside around the wheel, I decided to fill in between the formers with foam, shape and then cover with fibre glass matting, but I didn't think it through properly. All went well until I needed to remove the foam.

I had used a liquid fibre glass paste to stick the foam into position as pvc glue would not have set. The trouble was that it left a real mess behind, having run and dripped all over the place out of site. That took a lot of cleaning up and lesson learned. I should have constructed the housing by planking the sides and glassing over the top of that.

[Noël Rumers]

Looking great Vince!!

What I do to glue foam in place is, just for this kind of thing, use a few drops of thickened 5 min epoxy with micro balls and aerosil.
You can, later on, easy grind the leftover of the epoxy out with a grinding tool if you need to, the foam can easy be taken out as well.
Worked always for me.

Noël

[VinceC]

Thanks Noël, I tried that and it works fine. I used cotton flocks to thicken the mixture and it is much harder to part.

Next is to create the canopy. First stage is to sand the contours for the front section. The back section is formed from flat sheet. It is not a 'Standard ' canopy for as you will notice the flat sides and the whole lot tapers inwards from the front to the rear. I will now extend the foam, sand to shape and apply the fibreglass to produce a smooth finish for forming the canopy.

[VinceC]

I just realised that the original front canopy was not moulded, but probably made from flat sheets and joined, which can be seen in this photo. The shape is also completely different to present day.

[chris williams]

They both look moulded to me, Vince. Skylark canopy might well do the job

[VinceC]

Thanks Chris. I will order one as a check