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Gentle Curves - Lucas his Skywriter


Lucas Hofman
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Small parts night - making the rudder horn. Since this will be pull-pull I decided to make one myself from a piece of 1.5mm carbon:

drilling the rudder horn.jpg

rudder horn.jpg

rudder horn fitted.jpgLessons learned here: the carbon plate (1,5mm HobbyKing) is easily drilled, but to hard to saw on a scrollsaw. However easy to shape using a Dremel with a cutting disk. Final sanding is easy too. Your hands get black, but the dust does not sting like glassfibre. Pleased with the result

 

Edited By Lucas Hofman on 21/12/2017 07:03:35

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Wondering how to get the upper wing fixed correctly. Many ways it can be wrong. By the way, what should the incidence of the lower versus the upper wing be? From Lyndays blog I get the impression it is 0, this means that due to the upwash of the lowet and rhe downwash of the upper wing the aerodynamical Angle og attack is not alike. The upper wing is working harder and will stall first.

What do you all think?

Lucas

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The cullprit is the changed airfoil. Mine is NACA 3414 ("Miller standard" versus Lindsay's 12%. If one keeps the trailing edge in place and sands the wing saddle until the lower wing lies flat on the table one gets a significant incidence. I should have kept the leading edge aligned with the bottom of the fuse.

Fixed by lifting the trailing edge and sanding out the dower hole as far down as it can go. Now the lower wing is at 0-0.2 degrees with regard to the stab. Half a days work but on track again.

Lucas

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onAnd some progress. Now the lower struts fixing plate is in water again the inner struts went fine. A litte filing to correct hole being half a millimeter off centre and the place was square.

fitting and adjusting the inner struts.jpg

After the lugs in the upper wing were adjusted for length the upper wing is also on zero incidence.

both wing on 0 incidence.jpg

Edited By Lucas Hofman on 26/12/2017 09:48:25

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Lucas, I had forgotten you had changed the section. I had a related experience with the Tigercub wing. It builds flat of course by virtue of the build technique but when you add cap strips you suddenly notice the curvature. I must have spent 2 hours wandering how I had warped my hitherto flat wing simply by adding cap strips. Then the penny dropped and although a little shamefaced I was once again very 😊.

Tim

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​Fitting the outer Struts. I make 2 triangular plates first to check whether the upper wing would be OK. That looked good so the final struts parts can be made. Decided to have a slightly different design, where the plates from top to bottom wing are not interupted. It will not win a price in a scale contest, but simple it is:

struts in place.jpg

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A lot of fiddling with the hatches. My method for getting the magnets aligned with the screws under. It is not so critical as when using two magnets, where a misalignment may result in the hatch pushed off by the magnet:

front hatch - getting magnets in place.jpg

a drop of (water based) paint on each magnet, push the hatch in place and one has circles where the wood need to be removed to sink the magnets in.

Lucas

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At last the hatches are completed and all is sanded. Surfaces to be covered with film sanded down to 400 grade. Next are glassing/painting and covering. I am longing for a clean job so out with the vacuum cleaner (both model and bench).

Thereafter away with the dusty clothes; a new piece of foam on board and a new razor blade for cutting the film. I use a tack-rag just before covering to avoid humps in the covering due to dust particles getting trapped.

Starting with the tail surfaces, they are easiest:

starting to cover.jpg

Cheers, Lucas

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Must be the slowest build ever, but at least the stab is covered (and the slits for the hinges opened up, using the still uncovered elevators. I once forgot to mark these before all was covered, and had a hard time locating them again)

stab covered.jpg

Covering always takes me some time getting back in to, and then it goes quite fast.

Lucas

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