Back to Basics

The wing structure is now complete, bit of gap filling to do on the underside sheet, and horror of horrors! Somewhere inside the centre section sheeting is a plastic headed pin. No amount of shaking and tweaking has persuaded it to poke through a servo lead hole. It reminded me of when I was an apprentice, we were building pressure cabins for the Valiant bomber, some small object had been dropped between the skinning adjacent to the door frame. I was sent to the tool store to get a "five sixteenth ferret". Took the team ages to let me off the hook. Anyway, I wish I had a five sixteenth ferret now, perhaps it could winkle out the errant pin. I really don't want to cut an access panel, perhaps the alternative would be a small magnet on a string. I've yet to cut holes for the servo leads to exit into the fuselage, perhaps the pin will fall out then. Finished the front bulkhead profile, Drilled it and fitted 4mm threaded inserts, attached the engine mount, marked and drilled for the throttle "snake" and the fuel tube. It seemed a pity to throw away my shaky attempt at laminating a cowling, I made a balsa former to support it, made a nose ring from 1/16" ply and glued it on, then with a filling knife I trowelled on a couple of dollops of lightweight polyester filler. This sands easily, so tomorrow, after I've sanded it down, if its acceptable I'll carry on, if not it'll be a laminated balsa and lots of shavings jobbie!

Ah tales of the apprenticeship , "go to the stores for a long weight, "get us a metric bubble for the level will ya" - happy days! My best memory, apart from riding the shaping machine to destruction and launching the acetylene bottle cap into the training room ceiling, was fitting paper capacitors across the socket outlets to the incoming year room soldering stations. Oh and directing the lathe coolant nozzle to the wall isolator switch - everyone did that!

Hi Brian

I passed the Merco onto Dave Bright yesterday, he should be getting it to you sometime

Thanks very much Jon.

Things have been a bit slow this week. I found the rattle in the wing was caused by a piece of 1/4" square balsa, that would excuse my not seeing it when I sheeted the wing, and explained why, what I'd thought to be a building pin, didn't respond when a magnet was placed near the rattling bit.
On Monday, my shed was targeted by some enthusiastic bees, after I'd shooed out at least five, all of which seemed to be quite agitated about something, I shut the door and found something else to do. In this case it was to get out the Moonglow plan and start making a list of things to get.
The Kadet has now got a "front end". I added some tissue/glue laminations to the existing cowling shell, this stiffened it up quite a bit. Today after a quick sanding down, the fitting went ahead with almost no problem. Apart from one! I should have taken more care in measuring the length. As designed, the cowling overlaps the front bulkhead by 1/4", so I got that bit back to front and instead of adding 1/4" to the overall length, I subtracted it. I didn't realise what I'd done until I had an unacceptable gap between the nose ring and the back of the spinner. I added extra balsa round the front of the bulkhead, that enabled the cowling to be moved forward, the gap is now about 1/8" ( I'll not give the approximate gap in mm because this is a model that is not only pre-decimal, its also American).
No bees today thank goodness, discovered that my neighbour opposite had a swarm clinging to a tree in his garden, quite a sight. However, there's no more building today, there's a person in the garden requiring assistance with various horticultural problems, not that I'm an expert, I just do what I'm asked(told).
The cowling needs a little more filling here and there, then several coats of primer/undercoat.

JonTappin wrote: Hi Brian

I passed the Merco onto Dave Bright yesterday, he should be getting it to you sometime

You are of course still welcome to my bitza merco - but i need to remain in lockdown for some time.

Thanks very much Kevin, it'll be fun to reassemble your Merco, and it would be nice to have a backup engine "just in case". Unfortunately I'm in the "lockdown gang" too, perhaps it won't be too long before we can meet at Cashmoor.

Yesterday I returned to the Kadet build, I'm still short of a few bits but hopefully there'll be a delivery soon. I popped the wing onto the fuselage and marked out the retaining screw positions as well as the centre of the locating dowel. I hadn't made things easy for myself, and I spent a long time trying to figure out how the drill the locating hole for the dowel when the top of the windscreen fairing was in the way. A walk round the garden and a cup of coffee later and I had the solution. It was simply a matter of hacking off the fairing, this left a pristine area of ply former begging to be accurately marked and drilled. With the dowel dry fitted and the wing securely taped in place, I made a thoughtless mistake, I drilled the holes for the fixing screws. Then I compounded the mistake by fixing the screws. I'd marked and drilled accurately enough as the screws went straight in without binding. It was only then that I dimly remembered that I should have checked the wing for squareness to the fuselage by the trusted method of measuring from each tip to the centreline at the rear end of the fuselage. Now for those who subscribe to the clinical world of the millimetre, look away now to avoid being offended. There was a difference between wingtip measurements, a difference too big to be ignored. The photos show the cause of the error. The centreline at the rear of the fuselage was measured from each side of the fuselage. The difference between the two dimensions was 9/32".
Now, should I ignore it? After all, the misalignment is only 9/64"(approx 3.571875 mm).

The answer to that depends on you really Brian, in truth for a model like the Kadet it probably won't have much of an effect, and could easily be corrected with a little rudder trim.

However for me, things like that would bother me ever after, knowing it was wrong, so I would correct it. With a framed fuselage, I wouldn't expect it to be a difficult fix, just cut the joints on one side, reset and refix.

But if it wouldn't bother you much, then leave it.

Thanks Jon, like you said, I'll always know its there, so.....small though the error is.....it has to be sorted!