It’s early 2020 right now, but this post was written last year, so it’ll make sense. Enjoy!
Welcome back Natsneez fans! Thank you for keeping up with the build progress. I hope you’ve found it as interesting as I have in writing about it!
Incidentally, If your thinking of building a Natsneez, click here to check out ‘P.E.’s’ original article as appeared in Aeromodeller back then.
Well it was time I took a look at the engine and tank arrangement, as well as finishing the cowl. I really enjoyed carving and sanding the cowl and making it fit around the engine. Of course this was all a side step to stop me having to consider making the tank! I did finally get round to it though using really thin brass sheet and 1/16 bore brass tubing.
I decided to make a really small wedge shaped tank that would fit inside the cowling and directly above and snug to the engine. I used tin snips to cut the brass sheet, folded it to shape with small pliers then soldered it all together. The bent tube on the letf is the fuel feed to the engine, the fill tube is on top and the overflow(hidden) is on the right. It worked out great as you will see from the pics 🙂
The one thing that supprised me though was how heavy the tank finally came out once it was all soldered up. I think it looks really cool though, all fixed up together – even though I say this myself!
The tank is pretty small – about the size of a 20 pence piece in order for it to fit inside the cowling. It’s all hooked up now to the engine with that clear fuel tubing. extra plastic tubing to add to the filler above and the overflow below.
I couldn’t resist taking it for a test glide with my brother and son over our local park area. IT FLIES GREAT!!! Hopefully i’ll have some pics and maybe a video of it’s flights once I crank up the engine. Exciting times!!
One of the things I’d like to change however is the plastic spinner, which I think is too big. Currently I’m using a 1 1/4″ size spinner but I’d like one much smaller. In my first Natsneez blog I mentioned maybe using a chrome spinner, which would have been great – if only they weren’t so expensive. Also the model was coming out nose heavy , so using a metal spinner is not going to help.
Still the model is looking great and minus a few tweaks, I’m not far off from painting the beast 🙂