James S tucano build

Ok, so I'm staring nearly 4 months after the official start in January - but I'm going to blame the weather for being too awful and the garage too cold!

A great advantage of this late start is I've been reading a lot of the other blogs and have made lots of notes especially off the "2013 Mass Build - general chat thread".

My own guide to this massive thread is as follows

• Motor Mounting Discussion - Page 18
• Fuselage Misdrawn on Plan and in wood pack - Page 20
• ( diagram of correction show on Page 1 of Phil Winks build blog )
• Use of triangle stock in fuselage - Page 26 / page 42
• Leading edge dowl - 3/16 - protects the front of the wings
• Removable wing photo - page 36
• C/F tube for leading edge - page 37
• jig for profiling wings - page 38
• wood for wing panels - page 39 long discussion!
• tailplane gusset commentary - page 41
• assembling fuzelage problems , F1, F2 - page 42, page 47, page 49
• nice photo example of rear mounted motor - radial outrunner - page 45
• auw discussion, page 50
• retro fitting birch / ply doublers a pain - page 52.

which are my notes up to the end of March.

So a big thank you to everyone else who has been posting about their builds and taking part in the discussion thread - I'm hoping it will save me some head scratching which I'm sure I'd hit otherwise.

I've built one other balsa aircraft from a kit - a Philip Noel Designs Tigercat which appears in my avatar - which was lovely but which took me so long to build I thought I'd never complete it or be too scared to fly it when I did finally complete it.

So for this build I want to finish quickly and not worry too much about minor details with the aim of rapidly completing it and seeing it fly. Having the blogs of so many other people to read before starting certainly helps this aim.

This week - the wings which seemed to be very straight forward.

I'm going for the removable wing option as it will be easier to leave it in the boot of the car dis-assembled, I'm using Phil Winks v5 templates for this ( thanks for posting these Phil )

and for the motor and servo's I'm going to try and re-use a load of bits I had left over from a defunct Multiplex acromaster.

The motor is a multiplex HCS 3516-1130, 134 g, should swing a 12 x 6 prop at @350 watts.

I want to back mount it rather then have all the motor weight hanging of F1 so had to buy a multiplex firewall mount for this. This cost £20 ( I know I could have bought a complete motor and mount for that money !!! ) but allows me to re-use stuff rather then buy again.

And the motor mount is colour matched to the motor so looks lurvely

The mount comes with different lengths of motor mount sides to allow you to adjust the length from firewall to motor mount front.

Luckily it looks like it will just fit on the plan. Using the very longest motor mount sides I think I can get the large black firewall mounting ring in between the fuz sides.

I'll try and sort out the servo mounting next and probably have a bash at the fuz next week.

Looks like you've made a good start already James.

Excellent work on collating the useful information from the main thread. I was thinking about doing that soon for when I start mine in a month or so, but now I can just use your index so thanks!

Look forward to seeing your plane come together.

A good start there.

Where did you get the motor stand off from? this could be handy for a different project of mine, once I get to start it!

Yes well done summarising a very long thread - just in time since I'm a late developer too .

Yeap very handy index - well done and thanks!

BEB

Thanks for the comments on the usefulness of my index on the general discussion thread. I was unsure if it would be useful to other builders or not so I am very pleased to get the feedback from IanH, Ian Jones and BEB.

And its good to know I'm not the last to start building!

I'll update the 'index' again when I've read through the latest posts on the general discussion thread.

Hi Olly,

I got it from SMC **LINK**

cheers

James

Looking good James and a double thank you for creating the table of contents at the top. I'm forever loosing things in that thread!

Note managed to do any work this week but here is my updated Index to the 60 page General Discussion forum - very interesting long post by the designer Nigel Hawes on page 60 about all sorts of things.

Motor Mounting Discussion - Page 18

Fuselage Misdrawn on Plan and in wood pack - Page 20

( diagram of correction show on Page 1 of Phil Winks build blog )

Use of triangle stock in fuselage - Page 26 / page 42

Leading edge dowl - 3/16 - protects the front of the wings

pilots and seats source, vortex and a photo - page 31

Removable wing photo - page 36

C/F tube for leading edge - page 37

jig for profiling wings - page 38

wood for wing panels - page 39 long discussion! also page 52, 56

tailplane gusset commentary - page 41

assembling fuzelage problems , F1, F2 - page 42, page 47, page 49

nice photo example of rear mounted motor - radial outrunner - page 45

auw discussion, page 50 and page 56

retro fitting birch / ply doublers a pain - page 52. what are these?

where are F4 and F5 attached - page 53

carbon pushrods - grade of carbon - page 53

hinges for control surfaces, good discussion - page 53

fitting 2.4 Ghz Rx - page 55

c of g - page 56

removeable wing photo's - page 57

finished model photos - page 56, 57, 59

aileron end gap sizes question - page 59

prop spinner source - page 60

Nigel Hawes interesting post of wing shap, U/C, prop and motor choice - page 60

Decided to start building again last bank holiday weekend when it was wet and I was straight into hand cutting fuz formers using a coping saw which was very boring. When the saw blade broke I went off to the hardware store to buy a new pack of blades and on a whim came back with this...

Far easier at cutting ply than a coping saw but the unexpected bonus is the rotary attachment which makes short work of 'fettling' jobs I used to do using a hobby craft rotary tool. I had considered buying a separate dremel but no need now. Money well spent.. Seemed expensive at over £100 but two tools in one. Clarke CSS400C

**LINK**

Anyway a weekends worth of cutting, sanding, fettling, lining up, cutting and generally not progressing very far but actually doing lots of work relating to preparing for assembly has got me to this stage. I've been referring loads to the build blogs of Woolston flyer and Phil Winks whose detachable wing mod I'm using.

I think this stage was probably the key assembly step for the fuz so confidently expect to have these all finished by June.

Edited By JAMES S on 01/06/2014 11:07:06

Edited By JAMES S on 01/06/2014 11:14:00

Well done getting stuck back into it james - Greenacres this year maybe?

BEB

Thats a good looking scroll saw there James and to be fair the price actually seems a good one, Clarke tools are usually pretty good heavy DIY quality too, I have one of their petrol generators, and unlike many others on the market has a 2800w rating and a power factor of 1 as opposed to the usual 0.8 so all of the power is usable rather than just 80%

You'll find with a really fine blade in its good for nice clean cuts on thicker balsa sheet too just wear a dust mask

Phil - ref the dust - I set up my new pride and joy in the lounge....lots and lots and lots of dust everywhere! I take your point about needing a mask for extended work with balsa. Also agree on your other comment on the quality of the kit - feels very nice and solid.

WolsonFlyer, not sure what is best for you, with my scroll saw I was able to create cut-outs in the fuz formers easily which is something you can't do with the table saw although I imagine the table saw is much better for straightforward cutting as the blade can't wander around like the scroll saw does.

Understand about the problems finding time to fiddle with models, I've had an enforced lay-off from doing other things for a week and the model came to the fore as I couldn't attend to the other jobs I was meant to be doing!

cheers BEB - we'll I've nothing on the Greenacres weekend, I'll have to think about it!

Decided today a bit windy for enjoyable R/C flying so spent most of the day building.

The scroll saw is the best tool I've bought yet for R/C modeling work. The rotary attachment meant hollowing out the tucano's 'cheek's was a five minute job with a rotary sanding drum. It made tons of dust so I was out in the garden to avoid covering the entire garage in a layer of balsa bits. Its looking more plane like now....

Now that is starting to look very familiar looking good James keep up the good work

Cracking on James - looking good!

BEB