Back to Basics

Working on the Kadet's cowl was a bit of a challenge today. The bright clear and very cold morning went through some rapid changes, one being warm and sunny and one being in the middle of a sleet storm. With one eye on the weather and the other on the cowling, I carved the approximate shape with my long bladed "prop carver" from my free flight rubber years. The final contours were completed using a Perma-Grit block sander. Three coats of sanding sealer and a final rub down with 320 grit paper and the cowl is ready to be tissue covered to match the rest of the fuselage. I should have marked the cowl parts with a pencil, I used an old ball point pen, and it shows!

Fortunately the wind on Saturday wasn't blowing in my garden so I was able to begin the final touches to the Kadet. After a lot of frustration with being completely unable to set up a Spektrum receiver with AS3X, it was plugged in to my laptop as the instructions said, but there was no way I could get the stabilising part of the thing to work. Then I swapped it for an AR 8000, bit of an overkill for the Kadet, but as it turned out, a complete waste of time. I think this receiver is a cheap copy and not a genuine item at all. Wish I'd kept the packaging now. Completely different story with a well used Spektrum AR 6210, now the Kadet has a set of working controls at last. The OSFS .40 was fired up, ran it up and set the tick over, adjusted the main needle for full throttle, set the throttle cut and checked the fail safe. Next Tuesday looks possible for a maiden, so in the meantime I'll recharge all the batteries, put some new fuel into the field container, check spare plug and props and try not to get too nervous by Tuesday.

Looking forward to seeing it fly at last - been a loooong time coming....:lol:

Moving on to the next "easy to fix" project, I've started refurbishing the Panic I was given last Summer. I did some basic structural repairs last year, just enough to make it flyable with some degree of safety. The covering is/was quite remarkable, the original appeared to be covered in translucent multi coloured pieces. Unfortunately oil had got between the pieces, and the covering was peeling off. The previous owner had coated the upper surfaces dark olive green and the underside pale grey, it looked OK from a distance, but oil had done its wicked work and around the edges the paint was semi liquid. I read up about getting oil out of balsa, didn't sound promising. After stripping all the covering from the fuselage and tail unit, I scrubbed the surfaces with alcohol and lots of kitchen paper. Heated the surfaces using a heat gun and more scrubbing with kitchen paper. After several goes, the surfaces were improved quite a bit. After lightly sanding down, I scrubbed a coat of ordinary spirit based knotting well into the balsa using a stiff brush. Next day, after another light sanding, I brushed on a coat of thinned PVA. I shall leave it for a couple of days to dry right out. In the meantime I needed to replace the elevator and rudder hinges. These were fibreglass/superglue jobs and were definitely "in for the duration". They didn't respond too well to my attempts with a balsa knife, but they yielded instantly when attacked with a thin diamond disc in a Dremel, bit smelly and best done in the open air.

The main subject of this thread... the SIG Kadet was finally introduced to the open sky of Cashmoor today. After an assortment of things happening, the main needle became "self adjusting" while the engine was running, rather odd as it seemed to be OK previously. A small adjustment to the detent cured that problem, then after several attempts to start the engine, finally the correct adjustments gave reliable running. After a fairly short take off run, the Kadet lifted off and flew . A couple of clicks of aileron adjustment had the model flying straight and level at half throttle. I was concerned that the relatively small aileron movement I'd built in would cause a problem, it turned out that the Kadet only needs a tiny input to roll quite firmly. The elevator is quite sensitive as well, but the model flies nicely using the throttle to maintain altitude. Altogether a nice model to fly and adding ailerons was a definite bonus.
There were some problems after the first flight, fortunately there were club members to help and advise. It has been a long adventure from the initial downloading of the plan from Outer Zone on 21st March 2020, to the maiden flight of today, all in all, a most rewarding project.

And great to see you didn’t have to PANIC at all Brian!