It’s early 2020 right now, but this post was written last year, so it’ll make sense. Enjoy!
Welcome back! Alright, wer’e on with the wings – and also the tail. The wings were a straight forward build with some interesting touches. The leading edge is meant to be tough and so is constructed from 1/16″ x 1/4″ hard balsa strip, but is glued to a strip of bamboo cane of the same dimensions. I used PVA glue to stick them together then bound them with cotton thread at intervals along it’s length. The result when finally built into the wing is what seems like a very strong leading edge.
The other interesting touch is the leading edge slats. Although looking simple enough to build, I found it a little tricky putting it together, especially as I built them ‘in the air’ as opposed to on the plan. Still some work to do on these.
Above is the wing virtually complete; just waiting to be sheeted. It’s been a while since I’ve built a traditionally shaped free flight wing so it came as no surprise that I made a few dummy mistakes, one of which was not noticing that the wing has four dihedral breaks – two in each wing. I fixed it later however. Just a bit annoying at the time!
And the above pic shows the removable tail unit which is getting the leading edges covered with 1/32″ thick balsa sheet, as well as the wing. Photo pic on a gorgeous sunny Saturday morning! In fact it was the morning of the Royal wedding!
Above is a quick lash up of the airframe – fuselage, wing and tail. about a week later. You can just see the interesting looking leading edge slats which are 50% done and eventually to be finished. I’m curious to see how well they work…:)
The tail unit is located with a special thin ply tongue that juts out from the front of the unit and then slots into the rear of the fuselage. I’ll have a pic of it in a later post.
yep, It’s a pretty cool looking model! very happy with the progress so far:)
Just as a heads up, if you’d like to read the original build article by P.E. Norman then download it here