Back to Basics

After a delay in the proceedings, I managed to fit together the sheets that made up the plan for the Kadet's ailerons.
Today I'll concentrate on the fuselage and tail plane.
No point in hurrying.
This project looks as though it might have to last until September.
By which time I'll probably have the Kadet ready to go, as well as knitting several pairs of socks, learned a new language, (I thought Mandarin might be appropriate) and grown hair long enough to trip over.

Now you may find this hard to believe, but I have hit a major snag with the Kadet build. The snag is caused by the fact that I've stopped eating Shredded Wheat and changed to good old plain porridge for breakfast. The oats aren't the problem, its the bag the oats come in, can't use it for templates as I could with the lovely big pieces of thin flat cardboard from Shredded Wheat boxes. Now its simple to change back to Shredded Wheat, but I come from a background where you have to eat up all your dinner before you get any pudding. This means I can't get Shredded Wheat (assuming they have some) until I've eaten this newly opened 1kg bag of oats. I've tried to persuade Mrs J to help me eat some of it, but she's a muesli person and only nibbles raw oats in moderation, I even asked her to make some trays of flapjack, but she insists that the sugar and butter would be bad for me. Guess I'll just have to get on with the "sticks" part of the build, there's quite a lot of that.

Another delay in the Kadet build. The original design uses loads of 3/32" sheet, the original design also had a 3/32" sheet basic fuselage, this was printed to enable the builder to build the structure onto the sheet sides first. Having had a good look at it and compared it to that of the latest SIG Kadet Senior, it would appear that the sheeted fuselage is a bit of an "overkill", the Kadet Senior is a simple traditional build from sticks. I'm going to spend a while revising the build method. I thought of powering the model with an SC or ASP 0.32, but even ebay prices for either of these motors is optimistic, so I'm going for an electric set-up based on the good old 3S LiPo and a 600W motor.

It is quite amazing what you find when you "tidy up " the workshop. Shamed by Mike's immaculate bench, I spent an hour or two, and finally got a glimpse of the building board that had been buried for more than a year. I boxed up the "stuff" and went to put it into our underfloor store at the back of the bungalow. I haven't been into the back of the space for something like ten years(that was when we had some plumbing carried out).
Sitting patiently in the dust was my partly finished Precedent T 240, next to it my DB Bi-Stormer (still waiting for a new nose) and a neglected Dragon fly autogyro.
I made a note that I must fit some lights in there.
Back in the workshop the bandsaw still works, some of the pencils have lead in and the sandpaper is still rough on one side.
Might make a start tomorrow.
The attached photo is not my workshop, its just to give you some idea.

If I tidied up properly I would never find anything again. Tried it before, so now I just call it an organised mess. but at least I know where stuff is.

I made a start on tidying the workshop this morning. Now my workshop has a funny floor, anything dropped on it vanishes in an instant, its a bit like a black hole in space. It seemed a good idea to get the vacuum out and do the floor first. Its an old fashioned machine bought from a charity shop, the only redeeming feature it has is a zip up cleanable dust bag. It isn't particularly efficient, but it makes a fair job of picking up the shavings and some of the balsa dust, what it is good at is letting you know when something interesting is in transit, the alloy pick up tube tinkles quit loudly. After doing the floors of both workshops I had to empty the dust bag. With the heap of dusty stuff on a sheet of newspaper I had a good rummage around with a magnet. Found lots of missing nuts and screws, a needle valve, several clevises and a whole load of modelling pins, you know the ones that Balsa Cabin sell. Big plastic heads and very sharp points, the reason so many were on the floor is because its almost impossible to pick one out of the box without having another one jab your finger, that makes you jump and the pin falls to the floor, and instantly vanishes. I was pleased to find several button cells, less pleased to find they were flat. Finally I found homes for all the bits and pieces, by which time I'd more than had enough. This afternoon I spent a while on the Kadet plan, as its a "kit plan" not all the parts are drawn, tomorrow I'll get the drawing board set up and try to remember how to get the various parts on to paper.