Scale Soaring UK

Hi guys,
to all of you a Happy Easter!!! Different than we use to have but still!!!
Also here all is quiet...

The hobby goes on, and that is something...
On the fuselage the doors were fitted too? The round spring is fake, the 1 mm spring steel rod is a kind of torsion spring and works well.
Note that I changed the rod with on both sides a very small Seegering. I learned from the Milan 1 with the G38 on that due to vibration these rings are a bit weak. Now I made from a welding rod of 2 mm my own long bold. I soldered a washer on one end and cut M2 threat to the other end with a M2 lock nut on there. So this is save now too!

With these things done the last bit to the fuselage had to be made, the instrument panel.
Here first the outside was on hand. The upholstering was done with thin foam bits and the compass was made out of scrap pieces POM or Acetal. (Turnable nylon quality) Due to the removable cover in front of the canopy, held down by a 1 mm spring steel rod, this instrument panel was in the way to pull the wire out or push it back in. All batteries will be under that cover so easy access was necessary. That is why I build in some strong magnets to hold the panel in place and can easily be pulled backwards out...

...and more...
The throttle stick with the feathering prop handle was made to fit the picture.
This handle too had to be movable as well to allow the instrument panel to be pulled backwards too...

...see these pictures that show the magnets and the wire...
All the wires in the front reception room are sorted as good as it gets.
The battery bay still waits for finishing.
I do hope that all batteries can be put up front so no extra weight will be needed like in Milan 1. Fingers crossed here.
The extra electronic systems are special and more about that comes soon too.
The rough cut instrument panel is ready and drilled, now the turning/milling work can start.

... the rudder has been finished now and the last hand to install the control lines are almost ready too.
After all the Milan 2 will look exactly the same as Milan 1! Only on the outside the registration # is different.
First the Milan flew as the D-CORE and now the G-CORE. Milan 1 has the G-CORE on the model and Milan 2 will have the original D-CORE on.
Some details will be different on the inside...

Great stuff as usual, Noel...!

Hi Noel,
nice to see you still going strong with modelling!
best regards
Ekke

Hi Chris and Ekke,
thanks for the comment!
And yes I still like building and finally I do have more to do so!
Ekke see the PM I send you!

Back to the Milan 2...
A real motor glider with an engine makes some noise that, we all know who like airplane, sounds like the best music in our ears, isn't?
Well building the Milan 2 with an electric motor with no sound of music after all isn't OK... my thinking...
So I came across a sound system to be build into the model too. The two small prints that are posted in this picture show the module and the amplifier. That was the easy part of it.
The speakers who are involved too, two of them, 70x70x35mm, needed some special care. No pressure can be put to the membrane of the speaker because that would damage them and no sound would come out anyway. That said I had a problem... They had to go under the cowl. Room to put them was big enough It looked if there was anyway. Inventing the hot water, or it felt like doing so anyway.
But I manage to find a way...
First the speaker boxes had to be made. The boxes had to be separated to guarantee a proper functioning!
I had also an idea how to fix them too, so a drawing was put on paper...

...the wooden box, with two chambers had two front and back slots to fit the two bottom distant pieces of the electric motor installation.
I must say it looks if it was a straight forward job... It wasn't at all so!
I had to cut fit and cut again the front and the back were made twice too.
In the end all fitted very well under the cowl without any cutout so the speaker box would stick out at some point.
Job done... This was only the start of it!
Looking at the Milan Cowl you have two air intakes and the exhaust pipes run out at the back close to the fuselage top side.
That is why the pressure would be high on the membranes leaving them unprotected.
Because the noise comes out of the back because of the exhaust pipes, it would be best to guide the exhaust music to this spot!
But how and would it be safe to do so?

The idea was to build two elbow like pieces that would fit the speaker top and guide the sound of music toward the fake exhaust pipes.
I had some pieces of polyurethane foam, easy to grind and to shape, and one can glue these parts easy with ZAP glue together.
So small blocks were cut and shaped to fit the inside of the cowl as well.

... lucky for me the speakers had a plastic cover to protect the rubber seal around the membrane.
The plastic cover was " THE " most helpful piece at the time!
I cut of the equal height of the foam blocks and with glue I mounted the two parts together to fit the speakers 100%.
After this check if all was like it should fit, I had to cover the foam with tape to be able to have the inside of the elbow as smooth as possible.
I taped the brown tape between two plastic sheets and cut each strip in smaller strips to have almost no folded parts of the tape.
Afterwards I covered the parts with small pieces glass fiber and epoxy. Not too difficult in the end and all looked OK to me!!!