Scale Soaring UK

The first attempt was ok but the second was much better when we heated the plastic until it was really saggy and soft.

Not perfect, but ok for test flying. I’m happy to be learning a new skill and think I could do better next time.

I’ll add a little cockpit detail then trim the canopy and glue to the frame.

Nice job of the canopy. It's not easy to get it right first time. I use a gas camping cooker to heat the plastic has it will heat all the plastic in one go and finish off with heat gun. Great Job. Roo

Cheers Roo. To be honest if I hadn’t seen you pull canopies it I wouldn’t have bothered trying! So thanks for the inspiration.

I had one piece of plastic left....and you know how it goes...you just have to have one last go, don’t you? Third time lucky - it’s just about perfect (I’ve had worse commercial canopies).

Couldn’t resist a bit of cockpit detail, even though it’s a very semi-scale model. After that I settled in for a couple of hours painstakingly trimming the canopy to fit the frame. Ooh, I do love a nice tight-fitting canopy, so this job is perfectionist nirvana. Then it was time for a quick round of Hunt the Canopy Glue (I won) and it’s now all glued in place, drying in the workshop.

I also made up and fitted a sprung canopy latch from some old transmitter aerial tubing and a ballpoint pen spring, which is operated by pull wire exiting the fuselage under the wing root trailing edge.

Tomorrow I’ll mask and spray the canopy frame and prop blades, then check the electrics all work and adjust C of G. If the weather’s ok I’m hoping to test fly on the Long Myndd this weekend, with prop removed.

Prop blades sprayed white after a tickle with 240 grit to give the paint a key. Did some other blades while I’m on...

Finished.

Last jobs were to spray the canopy frame and check the CG was where I’d designed it to be (based on the original fuselage). It was spot on.

I also checked the electrics really thoroughly last night, wiggling all wires and connections to check for reliability. That was lucky... I found intermittent faults on rudder and one flap...traced to accident damage to the wiring. I slept on it then woke up this morning and replaced the entire wiring loom inside the fuselage. Better safe than sorry, (as wise, risk-averse people say).

So here’s the old and new front fuselage sections. (The new one is at the bottom of the photo )

Next photo will hopefully be atop the Long Mynd before I throw it off....

Perfect conditions on the Mynd and it flew straight out of my hand just like the original. I moved the CG back 2mm after the first flight for a more neutral feel.

Thanks to everyone who's shared tips and inspiration.

Rog

Well done Roger, thanks for sharing the rebuild, Terry.

Couple more photos, from a friendly passer-by.

Fun times.

I’ve decided to build a new rudder. Nothing horrendously wrong with the existing one other than it’s built-up and film covered and I can afford to make a stronger/heavier rudder now that I have a motor in the nose.

I wanted a nice glass finish so first thoughts were to strip off the film and then cover the original balsa structure each side with grp sheet, fabricated beforehand on plate glass. I know a few folk experimented with this method in the 80s.

So I waxed a handy sheet of glass, sprayed it with acrylic white and then laid up two layers of 100gsm cloth (weave at 45 deg to each other) and an equal weight of epoxy resin. The idea was to make a light, tough, shiny grp skin that would need no further painting after gluing to the fin structure.

Not so much. Peeling the grp skin away from the glass revealed lots of pin holes (see photo). I may explore this approach again some day, but I’ve decided to go a different way with this rudder....