David Hayward.

Sweet Virginia is now covered and decorated, I couldn't find a pilot I liked so painted the canopy black. All the lettering etc is printable clear vinyl, with a coat of fuel proofer once applied to protect the ink from fuel. All control throws and CG set up as per instructions; now just waiting for a suitable day. I will take shoot some video of her in action as soon as I get the chance and post it here.

And more covering. The black stripes are self adhesive vinyl supplied by Elephant Supplies via ebay. Just the ailerons to go, plus a few trim bits and pieces and then final assembly.

Just a little progress over the last few days, as well as covering I have also attached rudder and elevators with mylar hinges. Elevators have also been pinned through the hinges using cocktail sticks for extra security.

Thank you. I guess the covering could be the same product perhaps?

Made a start with the covering and using MacGregor iron on film for the first time. So far so good, made it round the curves at the nose ok with a few cuts to help. One minor niggle, where you slightly overlap sections as when covering a fuselage for example, the adhesive bleeds out from the overlapping edge onto the finished film, leaving a white line along the length of the overlap. Iron is set to recommended temperature as per instructions so I don't believe it's too hot. Fortunately, I've found it can be cleaned up with meths so it doesn’t permanently ruin the finish, however, never had this issue with any other iron on film; on the plus side it’s considerably cheaper than some other options. Progress so far...

Yes indeed, its slightly in front of spec now and I can also adjust battery position if needed as I would like to keep it a little less than 95mm back from LE to hopefully keep it on the tame side to begin with at least.

Prior to covering, I need to check CG, which should be 95mm back from the front edge of the wing adjacent to the fuselage sides. It turned out to be quite nose heavy actually with the battery mounted under the tank at the front, so I relocated the battery to just behind the cockpit and now it balances at 89mm, so I’m happy with that. Now I’ll get on with final rubbing down/filling and covering....

This just leaves the aileron servo, I elected to sink the servo into the wing and fix to bearers epoxied to the wing surface rather then the side mounted arrangement on the plan, again just personal preference. At this point I thought I would put it all together, fit the tank, engine, battery and check the balance, which turned out to be nose heavy with the battery installed under the fuel tank. So I’ll relocate this further back, possibly behind the cockpit if necessary and I do also have a slightly smaller silencer I could fit if needed. Hopefully won’t need to add any weight to achieve CG. Looking for a suitable pilot and will then put in a cockpit floor plus front and rear panels to finish off cockpit area. Then onto covering...

Now I have the wing in place I’ll move on and fix the tailplane, my order of doing things has differed a little from the instructions but only due to personal preference. I like to physically have the wing in place when I am fixing the tailplane so I can make sure they are level with each other. Tailplane dry, fin followed and squared against the tailplane. Now came time to hinge elevators and rudder. A note here about the fin/rudder if you’ve decided to have an operating rudder (the standard build doesn’t), the hinge line of the rudder, true to scale, would be slightly further aft of that on this kit (marked on plan). It would be easy to move the hinge line slightly aft if you wanted to, or, build with parts supplied and angle the elevators to clear the rudder movement – see images. Hinges done followed by fitting control horns and connecting push rods at the tail end. This then enabled me to finish off the pushrods at the servo end, binding and gluing threaded rod to dowels for final connection to servo’s.

Sheeted rest of radiator housing on fuselage and sanded along with the block now attached to wing. I think that’s as far as I’m going with the shaping of the radiator, perfectly adequate for what it is.

Fixing wing in position with the front screw and ensuring its straight and true relative to the fuselage, the radiator block 22 is to be glued to the underside of the wing. In preparation for this the dihedral angle has to be chamfered into the bottom of the block so it fits snugly against the wing. Then ply former 23 has to be positioned and glued to 22. It was about 10mm too deep so having trimmed it to size I held it in position on the fuselage by the two 6mm dowels just extended enough through from the fuselage, then holding radiator block firmly in place tacked 22 & 23 together with a couple of drops of cyno; removed 22 & 23 and fully glued together, again with cyno. The two 6mm dowels were then glued into the radiator assembly. Preparation done, it was time to epoxy the block to the wing. Applied masking tape to wing and epoxy to the block, fixed together and weighed down to dry.

Prior to epoxying bandage I made a 6mm hole through the front of the wing for the front screw fixing which has to line up with the threaded hardwood bearer* fixed in the fuselage. This is down the line of the join in the wings and 32mm back from the front. I didn't drill this hole as it's just two very thin obeche skins separated by polystyrene with epoxy right down the middle and a drill will just kick off to the side and generally make a mess, so I went through first with a small terminal screwdriver with a pointed end. This was slightly off centre, again due to the epoxy, so I then used a needle file, to file into the epoxy and bring the hole back to the centre. I then used a 6mm diameter file to open the hole out to the correct size. Part 29 a circular ply ring is glued to the bottom side of the wing to reinforce where the screw head sits. *A belated note about the threaded hardwood bearer, this would I believe be best glued into position when the two fuselage sides are joined as it sits in slots formed by the balsa sides and the ply skins, however, the instructions leave this until point 22 making it more difficult to fit.

Glad you are finding it useful Neil, what engine are you putting in yours?

The torque rods in and the epoxy dried, both rods moving freely, one was a bit sticky to start with but freed off after moving back and forth a few times. Ailerons then hinged with supplied Mylar strip. Joining the wings with epoxy came next and required four blocks made up to 25mm depth to be placed under leading and trailing edges at the tip each side, everything held in place with weights while drying. I was preparing to epoxy the wing bandage in place when I realised I hadn’t glued the two leading edge blocks in place, parts 30; its not actually mentioned in the instructions but is quite clear on the plan. Just need to be aware the instructions for the wing are I suspect generic across the various funfighter models, so inevitably, there is some variation. Anyway, blocks glued in place and wing bandage epoxied over join in wing.

Hi Geoff, yes it has worked just fine. It is rather counter intuitive to drown your torque rod in epoxy I have to admit, but it's a well proven technique amongst those who have built the Cambria FunFighters and the crucial step is to coat the rod well with vaseline of course. Ref the Mew Gull, you may remember this post... https://forums.modelflying.co.uk/index.php?/topic/40939-chorus-gull/page/2/&tab=comments#comment-811305