Phil Willett

And the wings now finished, with ailerons and flap hinges glued in final place and linkages adjusted to suit. The wing is covered in grey film with yellow/black stripes sprayed over. The USAF star has been home printed on sticky back vinyl with my ink jet printer, given a thin coat of clear lacquer (I used Halfords automotive clear lacquer) and then stuck in place. I next plan to add panel join lines with a permanent marker pen and the give the wing a thin coat of clear varnish over the lot to waterproof them. . I have also made a simple cockpit arrangement seat and pilot. sprayed and ready to fit when I get my canopy. On the delayed Vortex canopy problem, I have had no response from Vortex to my many emails, so I wrote a letter to them last week and received a reply by email from Steve. He tells me they are having problems sourcing the thin plastic material used for the canopy as the supplies have been gobbled up by the NHS for use in making the visors for covid NHS staff. Hence the delays. He hopes to get a supply soon and will make the canopy for me as soon as he can. So as far as I'm concerned the plastic is being put to a more important use than my canopy and I am happy to wait until he can manufacture it. Cheers, Phil

A bit more progress for me... The fuselage is now sanded and primed. . Im still waiting for Vortex to supply me the canopy so I cant really move further forward anymore on the fuse because there is still some balsa work to do the fit the canopy. So I've started to finish the stabilisers and wings. Here are the finished stabilisers. Covered in film and sprayed yellow/black stripe. I made 4 servo hatch covers using ply sheet with a plastic tube cut and glued over a slot for the linkage, and reinforced with glass/epoxy then sprayed silver to match. Couple of mini screws used to secure it down and it looks ok and should protect the linkage quite well. . . . .

Hi Dirk, fantastic job in finishing your Sabre. It looks superb! Can I ask, what type of masking tape are you using to get those perfectly sharp and straight joints? thanks, Phil

A bit more progress on the wings. I have now covered the wing with silver film. This was easy to apply and the finished article looks great!. I covered the wing with five pieces of film; belly pan first, two bottom surfaces and two top surfaces last. . .The finished wing looks like this. . Now onto the fuselage. This is my first time at glassing a fuselage! so I read up on some written articles I have from various sources and of course the excellent guidance given on this sabre build blog. Advice does differ slightly between modellers so you have to go with the method you think should work for you, and try it and see what the outcome is. I have glassed the fuse using 25g/m glass cloth and the Aeropoxy epoxy resin system. I carefully cut the glass cloth to shape the fuse including the fin with sharp scissors (it helps if you wear tight rubber gloves during this process to stop the glass cloth snagging on you fingers). Once placed over one side of the fuse, I mixed a small amount of resin and carefully poured and spread it over the cloth starting at the centre just enough to wet the cloth. when spread I used a soft brush to brush it smoothly over the cloth. I continued to mix more small quantities until the whole side was done taking care not to spread over the openings or sides. This was left to cure. When it was dry but still bit tacky, I used a razor blade to cut and shave off the excess cloth from the edges. I did end up with a few runs when it was cured by a careful sanding with fine wet/dry paper soon cleaned them up. . .When dry I repeated the other side using the same process. When this was cured, I lightly sanded the fused using fine paper, then applied a flow coat of resin over the whole fuse using a brush. When this dried it gave a nice smooth glossy surface over the whole fuse. The next job is to sand the whole fuse using fine paper to prepare it for spraying with primer.

Hi, a bit more progress this week, . .The fuselage is more or less finished now awaiting the cockpit detail and canopy. I think I'll glass the fuselage and add the canopy afterwards. I'll use any spare time waiting for a canopy to add cockpit detail. .Back onto the wings now. The 4 control surfaces need completing. This involves fitting the hinges, linkages, horns and testing control throws are ok. I've tried three different arrangements of hinges now and settled on centre mounted Robart hinges, with rounded LE on flaps and ailerons, and convex TE on the wing. The gap is minimal and I can get quite a good downward drop on the flaps of around 70 to 80 degrees. To get a convex TE I added two small triangle strips to give a V shape then filled with filler and sanded. .Servos hatches look like this. The hatch covers are 1/32 ply sheet with 1/32 balsa frame (1/16 sanded). My intension is to tack glue them in place with CA. If I ever need to remove them I will prise them out thus breaking the balsa frame and replace/repair and reglue. The only downside of modelling the Sabre for slope flying is the low wing position and its susceptibility to damage on landing (or in my case ditching)!I The control linkages are particularly prone to damage. I therefore favoured a top exit linkage for the flaps and ailerons to prevent damage on landing as per the design on the second Sabre RCM&E article. However, I had the devil's own job getting the geometry for a top actuating aileron linkage to work due to the wing thickness being quite slim at this point. Probably down to my limited experience I fitted the servos a little too central in the wing? So I've ended with a conventional bottom hanging wing linkage as per the prototype. I'm not happy with this arrangement due to the exposure to damage on landing, but I will fashion a small cowling onto the hatch covers to protect the linkage a bit (like that used on the prototype Sabre). However, I have gone for a top exit flap linkage which is a better arrangement on these al least. That's my progress up to date. With the fuse and wing now practically built, I'll move on to finishing now. I'm only glad the event has been postponed to September as it would have been a mad rush to get it ready to fly by next month! Should have started it earlier I hear you shout!! Cheers, Phil

Further photos of my build; I moved onto cutting out the wing seat from the fuselage. I decided to fit two sheets of 1/32 ply as the wing seat supports. I notice from full size photos that there is very little in the way of a wing fillet between wing and fuse on the Sabre. I thought without a fillet it didn't look quite right (with a sharp acute angle) so I have given it a very small thin fillet on the outside which will blend into the leading and trailing farings. .Masking tape on the wing top skin to protect from glue, then tacked the 1/32 ply to the fuse with CA. Then dry I packed the gaps with balsa pieces (see photo) and glued. This ensured the ply is a neat fit on the wing top skin and no gaps. . Next I fitted a fillet onto the gap using 1/4 soft triangle which was shaped to follow the contour. It needed a little coaxing by wetting it and bending until dry. The ply acts as a support for the balsa now. Once glued on and dry, it was carefully sanded and the ply edge trimmed to give a small fillet. .Next job was to offer up the wing and fuselage for final fitting of dowels and wing bolts. The gaps left in the fuselage allowed me to accurately mark the location of the holes for the wing dowels and the wing bolts by prodding a screwdriver/allen key with paint on the end to make the position of holes as follows. . .Once the wing was sitting straight and level, I marked both were drilled and dowels fitted/glued and wing bolt holes drilled. This ensured the two mated perfectly. . I also fitted a triangular sheet piece behind the wing bolts to fill in the space. . Now the remaining fuse planking was finished off. Now I fashioned a belly pan onto the wing using 6mm balsa soft sheet. . Next jobs were to fit small farings on leading edges and training edges of the wing root to blend in with the wing fillets.The front ones required a bit of reinforcement to prevent damage so I used a 1/16 ply plate. When sanded this looked quite nice. . .Then onto the rear faring.This involved a sheet of 6mm balsa glued and carefully sanded to blend in with the fuselage. . . Finally two small farings added to allow the wing TE to fare into the rear wing faring. The cockpit floor panels are added. I'm afraid I don't have the skill or the time to produce a scale like cockpit like many of you expert PSSA'r are doing, I'm quite satisfied with a basic pilot and cockpit outline shape W/O detail which is painted grey to blend down behind the canopy. Talking of which, I have not been able to procure a canopy from Vortex Vacforms as they have not responded to my requests or emails for the last 2 months. I'm assuming they are closed due to the Virus and very much hope they will reopen soon as I cannot complete the fuse build until I get a canopy. Failing that you may see my Sabre pilot flying around the Orme "Al-Fresco"! . .The fin was finally glued in place having carefully checked that the bell crank is moving freely. A little packing was required between the formers. The dorsal fin added also. . This part is quite tricky to get right in terms of the positioning of the tailplaneand shaping of the fillets . Careful sanding produced a reasonable finish. . So its coming together now. cheers Phil