Back to Basics

If you are squeamish, don't look at the attached photo!
The second foam plug has now been glued for 24 hrs, I'll attack it tomorrow and with luck it won't fall apart.
I rescued the first wobbly attempt from the waste bin, trimmed the edge and perched it in place on the Kadet's fuselage.
It might look alright from a distance. Its a bit wobbly, perhaps I'll be able to fit a former or some sort of bracing.
Perhaps reviving the old fashioned art of "Papier Mache" might be the way to make cheap cowlings.

Brian - Rather than revive -" Paper Mache " - how about fabricating a cowl using
Balsa - you can the enjoy creating a pile of balsa shaving & dust !!
Pics of fabrication of " Mini - Roo " cowl attached.

Colin.

Might give it a go Colin, papier mache is messy in a different way, at least balsa shavings don't stick to everything in sight. You'd be surprised just how far some PVA soaked tissue can go. Thanks for the encouragement.

Brian wrote: at least balsa shavings don't stick to everything in sight.

No maybe but they appear all around the house for days afterwards. Poor Henry gets a lot of abuse.

The Kadet build has slowed a little, I had an interesting diversion with a 3D printed project, but that was only an hour or so, not doing anything, just waiting for the print to finish. I dodged out between the showers today and did a little work on the fuselage. Traditional builders will note that I've committed the cardinal sin of pinning the cross braces to the building board, no excuses, I was in a hurry. With all the cross braces glued up, I put a strip of balsa on the tail plane seating and another on the wing seating. Peering across the tops of the strips showed that the fuselage was not twisted. I hope it stays that way when its taken off the board! The reason for my haste in adding the cross braces is shown in the second photo.
Sourdough bread has nothing whatsoever to do with model aeroplane building, but just look at the photo, imagine a slice thickly spread with avocado, topped with crispy bacon, or buttered with real butter, not the spread easy from a tub stuff, and a couple of poached eggs, perhaps a bit of watercress for a garnish. Best of all is lightly toasted, buttered while still warm and topped with Eggs Benedict and a wafer thin slice of smoked salmon. The best thing about sourdough bread is not just the taste, or the texture, or the crunchy crust, its the fact that its full of holes, and you can fill the holes with anything you fancy.....YUM!

And many thanks indeed Brian for diverting to the 3D printer

Basic framework for the Kadet fuselage unpinned from the board and lightly sanded. Tail plane under way. Slicing up more 1/4" sheet to make the 1/2" X 1/4" main spar. Pencil, rule and rubber at the ready, I'm going to see about inset ailerons, don't fancy the retro fit full span strip jobs on the SIG add-on plan. Shouldn't be too difficult to add a couple of false spars and slice the ailerons out after the wing has been built.

Hi Brian - So it's ailerons then, gives you a better chance in the wind.
Thought the inset aileron arrangement on my vintage style "Rainbow" trainer
would be of interest - one servo per aileron allows for more accurate setting up - pics attached.
You are welcome to have a go with her when Cashmoor reopens, I use it mainly
for giving flight experiences when we have open days & also for occasional training.

Colin.

Thanks Colin, I'm setting the ailerons into the wing as that won't alter the "plan view". I'll reduce the dihedral to 1" under each tip too. I'll use one servo per aileron, easy to set up. What I must remember is to make holes in the ribs and fit paper tubes for the servo leads. The times I've ended up fiddling with a short length of sharpened brass tube between the rib bays!

The Kadet's wing is constant chord, I made a simple template so that I could cut the ribs one at a time, no point in making two templates and clamping them round twenty balsa blanks.The ply rib template has a piece of scrap balsa glued to one face, and a couple of "anti-slip" patches of sandpaper to the other. Anyway, slicing ribs is not only therapeutic, it enabled me to catch up on the latest episode of the Archers. Then I hit a snag, I was using 3/32" sheet for the ribs and I thought I had two sheets, I did, but one sheet had a bit missing. I could get eighteen ribs out of what I had, I didn't have anything else suitable, so I patched together two ribs from 3/32" offcuts. I'll put those two ribs at the wingtips, then they'll be glued to the tip blocks and it won't matter. The second rib template will be used to position and cut the assorted notches for spars etc.