Back to Basics

You should know better than that Phil, old toilet doors are likely to have either a heart or crescent shaped "vent" cut in the top (above eye level). I'll have you know the "Board" was bought from a place like B+Q at Christchurch, I think it was called Texas. Its a left over bit of mahogany veneered chipboard that was in the "odd bin" area. It was about half a crown, so obviously a good quality item.

Nice calm morning today, I thought I'd be able to get the upper surfaces of the SE5A's wing covered. Didn't realise how long it would take to do the fiddly bits around the cut out in the trailing edge and the extra fiddlies around the front fairing and dowel area. While trimming the overlaps, I turned the wing upside down and promptly realised that I should have covered the underside with an olive drab strip the same width as the fuselage. While sitting with a cup of coffee, for some reason I wondered if the underside of the fuselage should be natural linen to match the wings. Seemed like a good idea, only some trimming to get the olive off and just one panel to get the rear end of the fuselage re-covered. Now I thought I'd had a good look at the fuselage, found the loose cabane struts, bent U/C and missing engine mounting bolt. The extra I found when, in a fit of completely misplaced enthusiasm, I cut away the covering from the underside of the fuselage, and found that what I had thought was merely a dent in the lower longeron, was in fact a crack. Even worse, the upper longeron had an even bigger crack in it. This afternoon I'm going to find a quiet place to sit and have a good sulk. No, in fact what I propose to do is.... I don't want to have to either patch or re-cover the fuselage side, the plan is to use a micro-saw and cut a slot diagonally along the length of the longerons, then add lots of aliphatic glue and insert 4mm X 0.5mm carbon fibre strips into the saw cuts.
Fiddly but a whole lot like fun.

Brian Jackson wrote: I think it was called Texas. Its a left over bit of mahogany veneered chipboard that was in the "odd bin" area. It was about half a crown, so obviously a good quality item.

2 un 6. :ohmy: Crikey! Old chap they must have seen you coming and thought, "We will jack the price up by 6 pennies and he will probably think he has a bargain".

Of course they did not know that you would get 50 years+ of use from it. :lol: A Win Win all round.

The longeron repair using a carbon strip was easier than I thought, slight downer when a splinter of balsa broke out of the side of the slot, I didn't see where it went, so couldn't glue it back. The longeron in the central position was repaired by gluing on another piece of 1/4" square. The lower longeron was crushed a bit at the impact point, I sanded a piece of scrap balsa to match the damaged area, left it slightly proud, to be sanded back to profile when the glue has dried.

Today I took advantage of the opened up fuselage, and re-fixed the rudder and elevator horns. The original elevator horn was at a slight angle and the movement didn't seem to be quite right as elevator movement was being restricted by misalignment of the clevis and elevator horn. I drilled new fixing holes for the horn and fitted a ball joint. This was an improvement and elevator travel is now "full and free". No problem with the rudder, just an easy replacement of the damaged horn. Finished up by setting rudder and elevator to approximately neutral using a servo tester. I'll go over the setting again when the model's complete and the radio is fitted. The funny looking pegs holding the elevator level were made to clamp an awkward piece of ply when building a cowling for my Hannibal.

Brian - Slightly off topic but relevent to all your work getting the SE 5 airworthy.
July edition of R.C.M & E contains an article
describing the resurrection of many really old models bought
for a few quid at swap meets etc.
Being a pensioner I glanced through it at
W.H.Smiths - Castle Point while
waiting for Mrs A.
Regards
Colin