Bates 1/5.5 Sea Fury Build

[Jon H]

i did have to cut an access through the fuselage and canopy. I was just able to cut out the scale door but it wasnt a perfect job

[Nick Somerville]

Whole airframe sprayed with Oxford Blue Klass Kote today using a satin catalyst. The visible inner areas will need a grey later but as I have yet to detail the insides of the gear leg covers and inner doors I shall do that later.  Next up once the paint has fully cured I can dust of my airbrush and get to work on the markings. It’s a great part of the build as it brings the aircraft to life, so to speak. I am using SMS acrylic lacquer for this which is available in a huge colour range locally from the Frome Model Centre. It sprays really well and had a very hard finish. Not fuel proof though, so once all done the whole airframe will have a final clear coat of Klass Kote with a gloss catalyst.

 

The markings are being sprayed using Flightline masks that I ordered at the same time as the plans. Nigel does a great job of these but the wait list is around 4-6 months, so wise to plan ahead.

 

 

 

[Martin McIntosh]

Great job Nick, those rivets look just right to me and worth the effort. How did you mask off the litho and exhaust stubs during spraying?

[Nick Somerville]

Green Frog tape. A bit of creep around the screws but will polish if when I buff up the litho with some brasso ?

[Danny Fenton]

22 minutes ago, Nick Somerville said:

Green Frog tape. A bit of creep around the screws but will polish if when I buff up the litho with some brasso ?

Solvol Autosol ?

 

Looks great Nick well done

Cheers

Danny

[Martin McIntosh]

I was thinking of fitting the litho after painting to avoid awkward masking and may do it in three parts per side.

[Nick Somerville]

Did consider that Martin, but The top lip has a very fine fold over that I knew would be hard to fit/glue after painting, without making a mess. Also there is a narrow strip of litho in front of the main heat panel that needed painting as per full size.

[Nick Somerville]

Probably one of the more worrying tasks of a build is the final gluing of the control surfaces. Get it right and happy days, but there are lots of pitfalls and I have lost count of the times I have had to fettle for free movement or tear out epoxied in hinges leaving a royal mess.

With a total of 9 control surfaces it was the wing up first today. The flaps attached with pinned heavy duty Dubro hinges. These were fitted to the flaps, vaseline applied to the hinge line and zapped with cyano. After lots of testing for each flap the three hinges on each were glued into the wing with epoxy. Ailerons had my own G10 fabricated barbed hinges with deep slots, so fairly easy to glue in with epoxy. A servo tester was used through the curing to check and recheck alignment and free movement. 
 

Using the servo tester for signal I connected up the JR Matchbox for the first time and was delighted by how easy it was to allocate servo direction for each of the four flap servos. I have ordered a very reasonable multi servo connector from Global RC, so I shall only have one plug to connect plus the airline when assembling the model.  The cockpit interior is almost complete bar the instrument panel. Photos soon.

[Martin McIntosh]

Came to fit the wing tips to mine today to discover a nasty warp in the right wing. More later on my thread.

[Nick Somerville]

Unsurprisingly after successfully hingeing the ailerons with a lovely snug fit I had just the rudder left to do but then hit some snags. Firstly I had painted over the marks I had made to indicate the three hinge points locations. The plan had been to use two large Dubro pin hinges for the lower and mid points and a smaller Dubro pin hinge at the top where the fin and rudder is too narrow for the beefy ones.

Firstly I could only find one large hinge left in my increasingly untidy workshop, so I fabricated an alternative using 3 strips of G10 as per the ailerons. Next I drilled out holes in the rudder and fin post following the positions shown on the plan. One was fine but the upper and lower ones I had clearly not followed the plan and had installed the appropriate balsa blocking elsewhere as I drilled into a void. Not good! To make things worse the movement  of the rudder look very tight to the elevators which could limit movement. On the full size Fury, once the tailwheel is on the ground rudder authority is known not to be great and so I imagine this will be similar on the model. Clearly I need to relook at the pivot point to maximise movement within the space. Lets hope I don’t need to rework the inner sides of the elevators as they are now glued in place.

To distract myself I added the foil frames to the wing nav lights and I will revisit the rudder tomorrow.

 

 

[Martin McIntosh]

That is exactly why I shied away from scale hinges after my Chippy nightmare.

[Danny Fenton]

I am sure you will crack it Nick, the nav light looks great

 

Cheers

Danny

[Nick Somerville]

Thanks Danny, all sorted now with some prolonged fettling. I haven’t achieved quite as much rudder movement as I would like but 30mm each way should do fine. Had a trial fit of the main legs and wheels today and put her together for a few quick photos. Next task is gear doors and pneumatic actuators. 
 

 

 

 

[Nigel R]

Superb. 

[David Hazell 1]

On 29/10/2021 at 20:56, Nick Somerville said:

 

‘Sounds dodgy to me Nick.’

 

Thanks Martin, will sleep easy tonight ?. The minute amount of epoxy, even if it softens, doesn’t have anywhere to go so I am reasonably confident. However I will certainly be doing very stringent tests before committing to aviation. Also the mid sized high quality aileron servos (KTS) are rated at 5.5kg  and though normally used in sailplanes should man enough for the task of scale warbird flying.

 

Have a look at this photo of my mock up of the RDS system before I installed it into the Fury. The nylon cylinder has a splined inner that takes an adapter to suit the servo splines (ie splines x2) and that has the usual servo arm screw holding it in place. There are two grub screws to lock the cranked rod that goes out to the aileron pocket and the rod has flats filed to prevent unwanted rotation. So the weak point in my set up is the inner spline reinforced with epoxy as you have mentioned. Once the ailerons are set we shall see but it could all be re-done if I am not 100% happy. 
 

Always appreciate of advice ?

Gents, what gauge wire do you tend to default to for the torque rod, and any recommendations for a wire bending tool? I see that the guy who was selling them has stopped doing so ?

[Martin McIntosh]

What is that torque rod operating inside? I would have thought that lining the boxes with 0.2 or 0.4mm GRP would be a good idea but never tried that system.

I lost my proper wire bender many moons ago due to this, that and the other so when I really needed one I googled it. Great video on how to make one, and it works.

I like the looks of those KTS servos. I have not looked them up as yet but where do you buy yours?

[Nick Somerville]

The torque rods were fashioned from some ceramic firing rods that I noticed when purchasing some clay and glaze materials from a local pottery supplies. The rods are normally used for supporting ceramic beads and have a very shiny finish and are not as stiff as piano wire, so bending accurately in a small vice is quite straightforward.  For the boxes/pockets I used 1.5mm pc board/G10 fabricated around some offcuts of the rods to ensure a tight fit. The rods are 3mm https://www.bathpotters.co.uk/firing-rod-3mm-thick/p2417 and once the boxes/pockets were made they were let into the ailerons on the hinge centreline with some extra scrap balsa to give additional support.

 

It is actually one of my job lists to do a thorough testing of the aileron surfaces under load to check the integrity of the installation now that they have been glued in place. They certainly seem beautifully slop free and provide the correct amount of movement required using almost maximum servo travel, which is good. Any other queries ask Danny Fenton, as he is a champion of the RDS system. 

 

 

 

 

[David Hazell 1]

Thank you Nick, very helpful! I've been doing a bit more scouring of t'interweb to see if I can source an rds adapter solution similar to the one Danny uses. I eventually found a rigid flange coupling shaft on Amazon that looked the ticket, but then realised it was made of hardened steel and probably weighed about 20g per piece. A little more searching and I found these on ebay:

 

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/363462983497?var=632681119935

 

I've ordered one (pack of 2 pcs) with a 3mm bore and will eagerly await its arrival from China! Will be interesting to see if it is good as Danny's home fettled version. If it's not any good, I'll definitely be coming back and asking for more help! 

 

Thanks again.

Edited November 30, 2021 by David Hazell 1

[Danny Fenton]

Mmmmm not too happy about that, I sent slightly different drawings to Xometry of almost that exact item, and now I see it being manufactured. 

If you get any David can you measure them please?

 

 

 

 

Serves me right for not patenting the blighters..........

 

I use a 2.5mm diameter rod, but keep it short.

 

If you really get stuck I will turn you some David.

 

I line the boxes with formica from worktops, very hard. The piano wire needs to be decent, not soft and springy.

 

 

 

Cheers

Danny

 

 

[Nick Somerville]

A few pics of the cockpit. The hole in the bottom is covered by the Pilot’s seat. Pilot has a nylon bolt in his back going through the former behind him and a wing nut tightening him in place. Hopefully he isn’t going anywhere. Nothing fancy for the instrument panel. Just a colour photo from the specific full size I am modelling on, hence the modern gps etc. Gives the right impression hopefully 

 

 

 

[Nick Somerville]

 

Adding some detail to the inside of the leg covers.

[Martin McIntosh]

Nick, do you really think that those will fit inside the wells after a landing or two? I generally use light alloy with no internal structure which fits over the wells. Not strictly scale but it works.

[Nick Somerville]

Martin, I don’t understand what you mean. The covers are fixed to the oleo legs so on each landing they will move with them. The upper leg cover will be hinged and when the legs are lowered won’t impede the contraction of the lower/main cover on landing  as per full size.

[Martin McIntosh]

Nick, what I mean is that if the legs bend a even a little the doors are likely to foul the wells since they look to be a close fit. On all of the many retracts I have fitted there is eventually some movement of the legs particularly after a fast take off on damp grass rather than landing which is much slower.

[Nick Somerville]

Appreciate your concern Martin. The covers are a very tight fit at present and they will need to be relieved a little.  The Sierra oleos and retracts are super sturdy so I have faith that they will keep their positions. The stand off scale structure is super light and inset from the edges of the covers, so not likely to be a problem. They have been fine on my P47 so far.