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Colin’s Spanish Fury


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I realised that I hadn’t soldered the lugs for the flying/landing wires onto the undercarriage legs before finishing the leg fairings, so some work was necessary, but that’s sorted now. Next step in finishing the u/c was fitting the wheels, but it become apparent that the conical form on the hub was nothing like the flattish disc on the Dowty sprung hub. After some deliberation I decided that vandalism was necessary, so attacked one of the lovely DuBro wheels with my trusty Black and Decker Powerfile. Fingers crossed, watch this space!

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The object of vandalising the wheels was to bring the outside face to flush with the tyre edge. I was surprised to find that the wheels were hollow, I’d thought that they were solid plastic. To restore strength undoubtedly removed by doing this I filled the centres back in with 1/2” balsa using epoxy resin and some Micro-balloons filler. It doesn’t look glamorous but job done. I’ve fixed the wheels on and secured them by soldering on flat washers on both sides, positioning them on the ends of the axles to replicate the full-size. Now I will be able to tidy the wheels up by fitting shallow domed hub discs, which I will make from balsa tomorrow. The flat washers will be completely concealed inside the hub discs. I’ve also given the undercarriage legs a coat of sanding sealer, then doped on tissue. 

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I only had a couple of hours this evening but the method of reproducing the wheel appears to be ok. I just need to finish carefully sanding the hub disc on the left wheel and it won’t take long to do the other one. When this is finished I will be on the home run with sorting out radio installation and control linkages and preparing the airframe for covering with Solartex.  

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Thank you Dwain and you Danny. What’s changed is that I’m getting a couple of hours in on this on most days now, whereas before sometimes I couldn’t touch it for weeks. Today I’ve been working on the second wheel, using a Permagrit to get the hub disc shape right and finishing off with fine sandpaper and sanding sealer. I think it’s as far as I can go with this type of undercarriage, although when finishing off I will pay some attention to fairing the length of axle inside the wheels back to the legs. I’m onto the completion stages now.  

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The next steps are around finishing off the fuselage and at this point I need to sort out the fitting of the tailplane and fin. Although everything looks accurate to the plan, on a trial  fit the fin  isn’t sitting right. The reasons aren’t immediately obvious, I’ll take a look in the morning after a night’s sleep! If thinking about it doesn’t keep me awake, that is! 

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  • 2 weeks later...

The last few days I’ve been working on the tailplane and elevators. I’m using Dubro heavy duty hinges. Before covering I need to reinforce around the hinge positions. The glass-fibre dummy elevator horns and the aluminium tubes for the false elevator cables are in place. The working elevator horn was made from an offcut of the 0.9mm brass components sheet that Ernie made for us, folded over to make 1.8mm and soldered.,that has worked out ok. 

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