Minus Thermic

Nice work Mike a bonus when it goes well.
Worth the effort

I've made a start on my Minus Acro. It's the same fuselage as the thermic but the wing is straight (no polyhedral tips), it has a symmetrical section, and shorter wingspan (0.7m instead of a whopping 0.9m). With the benefit of hindsight, I have made a few very minor alterations to the fuselage construction.

Firstly, the tubes for the elevator pushrods were originally glued as straight as possible. This meant that the pushrods are under tension in the finished model as they are forced towards the elevator control horn. I've changed this so the tubes are angled upwards to hopefully relieve some of the pressure. I doubt it will make any difference to the way it flies, but it will make it a lot easier (I hope) to set up the linkage when it's time to install the radio.

The second modification is at the nose block. The centre of the block has a ply keel. Later in the build you are supposed to drill through this to make the canopy latch. Unfortunately, the drill wanders off centre into the soft balsa which is why I could not get the latch working satisfactorily. So I've cut a small slot in the ply prior to laminating it. It is doesn't help I can always revert to the magnetic latch but I'll see how this one turns out compared to the first attempt.

The first job for me was to knock up a quick jig to enable accurate alignment of the fuselage side and the plywood doubler. How anyone could possibly glue these two pieces together without such a jig is beyond my imagining



I'll be incorporating your mods into my build Mike, so if I lag behind a bit it is only to appreciate the cohesive whole of your building methodology... not procrastination as has been suggested in the past.

1) That work bench is WAY too tidy
2) Jigs are banned on this build
3) Is it finished yet??

Chris73 wrote: 1) That work bench is WAY too tidy
2) Jigs are banned on this build
3) Is it finished yet??

1) You should see the other end... it's completely clear and ready for any eventuality.
2) That doesn't even warrant a comment, all I'll say is that Jigs are the back bone of any systematic and considered building philosophy.
3) I'm in 2/3rds time... 1/3 doing 2/3 drinking tea or coffee thinking about the next step, it's the most productive use of time.

I'm surprised you've not balked at the idea I'm not going to use superglue Anyway 2/3rds time is over, time to glue.

I didn't use a jig on my first build. On the second one I used the carbon wing joiner to make sure ply and balsa were lined up. Kept using the joiner to make sure it was square while I glued formers in place. One deviation from the instructions was that the rear fuselage was taped and not glued at this stage...OK, I did glue it but on both of mine it ended up being slightly banana shaped, so had to be split in order to attach the fuselage bottom before re-gluing.

MikeSeale wrote: it ended up being slightly banana shaped.

Doesn't matter Mike, slopers are normally flying in a cross wind anyway!

Mike, Am I missing something or do we, or rather, do I need to enlarge the snake holes in PW4 and PW12 as they are smaller than the 2mm snake? The only reason I ask is that everything else seems to be cut at the right size!

I enlarged them, no jig needed just a simple drill bit will do