Corrective Surgery

So it's been a while since I updated... Yeah.

Well, I finally got around to doing some more work on the plane, the next task was to re-attach the nose that I so callously cut off so that I'd have access to the motor mount once the plane was all glued together.

First, thing I went and bought some carbon-fiber rods (1.8mm diameter I believe) and some carbon-fiber tubes (with an inner-diameter of 1.8mm to match the rods) that would slot inside of each other.

Then I proceeded to cut them up. The tube that the rods would slip into got cut to about 4cm, and the rods to about 8cm (twice the depth of the tubes). I figure this should give me plenty of strength and space to work with when I'm sliding the nose on and off, without having the rods or tubes long enough that they'd poke through the cowling of the plane.

The next step was to mark the points where I wanted to put the rods (on the cowling ). I marked the cowling first because it has the least amount of excess foam, and so would be trickiest to get the rods in safely.

From those marks I extrapolated out to the edges of the plane, held the cowling flush with the fuselage and marked the same points on it, and then extrapolated back inwards to get the point on the fuselage that would be around the same spot. It was hard to check if it was correct or not, but it turns out this worked pretty well.

Next step was to grab a little drill bit (actually just smaller than the rods) and drill a guide hole into the cowling for the carbon fiber rods. I drilled the holes by hand because it's pretty delicate work and I needed to take my time and make sure I didn't end up drilling out the side of the cowling.

Once that was done, I test-fit the rod in the hole to make sure it looked pretty straight. Success!

I repeated the process 4 times until all of the carbon fiber rods had nice little holes to poke into.

Then, I did the same thing (with a slightly larger drill bit) for the 4 tubes in the fuselage half.

A quick test-fit with one rod and tube...

... and then give it a shot with all 4.

Next thing you know, the plane has a nose again!

Now all I have to do is glue these things in there to make it nice and permanent... But it's too late to do that tonight, but soon.

Some tips that I picked up:

• I had to shave about 1cm off of the rods before they would go into the tubes smoothly. I think they ended up a bit long because the drill bit I had was too short to get all the way into the cowling. Probably a good thing since I think I was really close to the other side... I might make the rods a little shorter (about 7cm instead of 8cm).
• Getting the rods to slot into the tubes is a little tricky. It helped a ton to file the tips of the rods that would go into the tubes down so that they were a little pointed. It doesn't have to be sharp, just enough that they are guided into the tubes from a rounded end.
• Take your time drilling, and do it by hand. Make sure the holes are nice and straight and it will all work out.

(more) Fiberglassing

So I've spent some more time fiberglassing the main fuselage. Here are a couple of pictures where I'm trying to show the finish on the body (it's tough to get a good shot of it).

I covered over the hole where the vertical stabalizer is going to go, but I'll cut it out and sand it down before I actually put it in there.

Here's the final finish on the engine nacelle (its just about ready for paint). You can also see a small divot I cut out of the bottom that will be painted to look like the air intake vent on the real plane (instead of the smooth lip they had there in the original model).

The next step will be fixing these two peices back together I think...

Wing Radiators

One of the distinguishing features that is missing from the original GWS 109 model is the under-wing radiators. I decided that I'd give making some a shot. I had a peice of packing foam that was about the right size, and after examining some reference photos that I had I carved some squares out.

I haven't attached them to the wings permanently yet, since I want to do it after I put the fiberglass on it. I'm probably also going to trim them down a little bit to keep them from interfering with the aerodynamics of the wing too much.

Fiberglassing!

So progress continues, but slowly. I did some work on the plane during some time I took off a few weeks ago, I'll let the pictures do the talking.

First thing I started on was putting some fiberglass on the detached section of the engine cowling. This was the first fiberglass I've ever tried to apply, and all things considered I think it went pretty well. I used 0.75oz fiberglass cloth and Minwax polycrylic.

In the picture above, you can see the texture that the fiberglass adds to the nosecone. After letting the nose cone dry for a few hours I would apply another layer of minwax to fill in the weave of the fiberglass. The next day I sanded and did another layer of minwax.

Next I moved on to fiberglassing the fuselage.

I followed the same basic process (two coats of minwax on the first pass, then sanding and some more) for the fuselage. In the next shot you can see the way that I covered the control rod tubes. I'm hoping that they'll blend into the body a little bit and not be so obvious.

Next, building the wing radiators...

Aerial Photo

Taken from my plane with my camera onboard. Kind of neat. Its the building where I work.