Mark Elen

I wasn’t happy with that servo plate, the retract valve servo was not pushing and pulling the valve properly, due to the rubber feet allowing too much movement side to side, so I tried it at 90 degrees and it was much better, so, made up another plate and it’s now done and glued in: Here is the bodge from yesterday: There is still some work to do at that back end, but it’s coming together Cheers Mark

I got home early from work today, so got a bit more done. Made up a bracket for the retract valve and did a bit more work on the servo bracket for the fuselage There is a bit of tidying up work left on that, but it’s nearly there. I’m thinking I’m going to run one of those receivers in the fuselage and the other in the wing, that way, the 4 fuselage servos can run off one, the 5 servos in the wing can run off the other and I will need to run 2 cables to the wing (power and S-bus) I’m going to run 2 Life receiver batteries along with a Powerbox switch Cheers Mark

Many thanks for all your kind comments gents. It is appreciated. I have a colour scheme in mind, but it’s an all solid colours civil one, it may be a bit beyond my comfort zone, but there is lots to do before I get to that stage. I’ve got plenty of thinking time yet. I seem to have done loads in the last couple of days, but got nothing much to show for it. That tail has been on and off a load of times messing about with the linkages. I did get the elevator ‘prong’ and the rudder torque rod both made up and silver soldered. I then set about F11 to give some clearance to allow that torque rod to swing. No room to get in, and a chunk of 1/8 ply to remove. Result is a bit of a mess, but no one is going to see it. Cheers Mark

Hi Martin, Many thanks for your kind comments, this model is my first go at planking and I have enjoyed it immensely. I’m now onto a tricky bit, fitting the control torque rods and getting the tail together. There is lots of head scratching going on right now. Cheers Mark

Thanks for your comments Gary. At last, I seem to have found a little ‘modelling mojo’ and have made a little progress on the Cougar: Cheers Mark

Hi James, I forgot to say, if you go down the tracing route, greaseproof paper will work - it’s what I used on the first attempt, but proper tracing paper is much better, I got a ten meter roll from e-bay for a few quid, it’s much nicer to work with. Make sure you pin it down over the plan and take your time. I then used a long straight edge and pinned both the original plan and my tracing to the building board and built the whole wing as one piece. If your board isn’t long enough, you will have to build one half at a time. Cheers Mark

Hi James, There are various ways of doing this. Take it to the local print shop and ask them to scan it and print it in reverse is one way that I have used to good effect, the problem with this though, is if their machinery changes the scaling, it all goes wrong. (When I did it this way, I got them to print the whole plan, fus, Wing right way and wing flipped, to negate any scaling errors) What I did with PS, if you look on page 3 of this build, was to trace out the whole Wing plan, then flip the tracing and build from that. It is an hour or twos work and you need to be precise with it, though, to be honest, I spent more time sharpening the pencil than drawing with it, but it is do-able. Im sure others have their own ways of doing this. Cheers Mark

Hi James, Have a look back at pages 1 and 2 of this build log, the photos should help. Cheers Mark

Thanks John, All of the comments regarding the weight of this thing have been playing on my mind the whole way through this build. Not any more. Last night, I picked up the 2015 summer special edition of RCM&E - the one with Tony Nijhuis’ electric de Havilland Mosquito. It’s span is 72 in (shorter than this) wing area is 5.2 sq foot (less than this) and it weighs in at 14 lbs! (Dennis Tapsfield got his Cougar built to 9.25 lbs) Tony gives the wing loading as 40 oz/ sq foot (although, by my reckoning of the above figures it is more like 43) If I can get somewhere close to 9.5 lbs, I will be happy. Cheers Mark

Hi Chris, Either of those two will do the job and as long as it isn’t really hot while you are doing it, will give you time to get it in the right place and pinned down. If it was me, I’d be using Aliphatic. (The normal stuff, not the superphatic) Cheers Mark

Hi Peter, Hope you are keeping well. Here is a photo of MK2 wing. I have made a better job of this one. I took the opportunity to tidy up a couple of bits that I wasn't happy with on MK1. I'm just hoping that the wing retaining holes will marry up with the t-nuts in the fuselage. Cheers Mark