Back to Basics

A couple of things spring to mind Colin. 1) Did Pat know you were waiting for "Mrs A"? 2) At last we know who turns pristine magazines into well thumbed relics. I liked the article in RCM+E, made me feel that I wasn't entirely alone in my mad "refurbish everything" hobby.
Unfortunately the SE5A has come to a halt again. The uncovered underside of the fuselage allowed me to sort out what was making the pushrods twitch when the rudder or the elevators were at full movement, tweaking the badly bent wires gave twitch free movement. Delving into the depths of the rear fuselage I found it had been repaired, as a bonus I noticed three unglued spacers too. this didn't show on the outside so I assume the fuselage has been re-covered. I thought it might be a good idea to see how the model lined up after the repairs. With the model supported on its undercarriage and a block under the rear fuselage I strapped a piece of straight balsa to the cabane struts and sighted the model from the tail. The fin a isn't square to the tail plane and the tail plane isn't square to the fuselage and it has a definite tilt when sighted against the balsa "straight edge" on the cabane struts. Then I measured the distance from centre front of the fuselage to the tips of the tail plane, unfortunately there's over half an inch difference between the two measurements. I'll have to get the SLEC building jig assembled tomorrow, looks as though there's going to be some serious dismantling and re-building before the covering goes back on to the underside of the fuselage.

Yesterday I had a frustrating day, partly waiting for a couple of engineers to fix our TV and 'phone, partly wanting to go and fly something, and being a bit fed up with trying to get the paint off the Multiplex Easy Glider. I've tried paint stripper, this only begins to soften the paint, and if left on too long, affects the surface of the foam making the individual "rice krispies" effect stand out. After the upsets with the "high tech" gear indoors, I thought a little therapy needing minor skills and nothing else would cheer me up a bit. I'd run out of paint stripper, that made working on the glider out of the question. Or did it? Just to see if it would work, I had a go at sanding the foam, and it worked, slow but not as slow at two coats of stripper and endless scraping. I'm using a detail sander that uses triangular sanding pads, it took around an hour to sand the upper surface of one wing. This didn't involve removing any paint, it was simply to sand the pimply effect left by the action of the stripper. This morning I tried to sand off the paint, this was very slow indeed, and rather noisy. To damp out the noise I put an old sheet, folded to fit under the wing. This made things a lot quieter, and as a bonus, the paint sanded off a lot quicker. I think it must be due to the fact that the unsupported wing was tending to vibrate under the sanding pad, the sheet prevented the vibration, this in turn improved the effect of the sanding pad, which has a very quick but very small action. This morning's sanding session had both wings sanded and ready for finishing in under an hour.
The SE5A will not be having its tail plane shifted, it is just too much work, and I don't suppose there'll be all that much deterioration in flying performance due to the slightly "off" rigging. It is, after all, only a beat up old biplane that will, with luck, take to the air again.

The Multiplex Easy Glider is now completely stripped, not a trace of paint anywhere, well perhaps an odd spot here and there. Unfortunately the surface of the foam isn't as smooth as it was when the model was moulded. All the surfaces are smooth after being sanded with 240 grit paper, but smooth and fluffy. I think that a "fluffy" model wouldn't fly as well as a smooth one. In the days when all my models were either free flight or control line, I remembered using thinned clear dope with talcum powder mixed in as a primer/filler undercoat. Hoping to get the same result using different ingredients, I thinned one part of PVA with four parts of water, added 50% by volume of talcum powder, stirred it up and slopped on a coat to the "fuzzy" foam fuselage. I was surprised at just how long the coat of home made primer/surfacer took to dry. It looks promising, the first light sanding had everything looking smooth and no sign of "fluffy" at all. Perhaps the second coat will be all that's needed to restore the glider to its original state. No photos, can't really show what "fluffy" moulded polyolefin looks like.

I don't know why you worry about holes or cracks in the fuselage Brian. Key Lime Air managed to safely fly and land and only lost a couple of suitcases. The Guy holding the phone is telling his boss, " Hi Guv, you having a nice day, how and I?, Just fine. We had a little problem this morning. Yes Yes a minor one. We got a hole in the fuselage. No sweat though. I know a Guy in the UK, Bournemouth in fact, Yeh, that's the place, beaches and ice cream, lots of old people live there. Yeh! Well this Brian can fix it no problem. PVA and Cusson's. :lol:

A second coat of home made primer/sealer was brushed on the fuselage. It didn't soak in as the first coat did, so it dried much quicker. The second sanding produced a very smooth surface, I think it'll be good enough to accept the final finishing coat of water based acrylic varnish. Meantime, the rest of the model has been undergoing the same treatment. Unfortunately I had to re-hinge the ailerons. They had been locked solid by the original paint, and weren't in a usable condition after the paint stripper had softened everything. The hinge line looks a bit odd, in the middle, its close to the upper surface of the wing, but at the ends, the hinge line is closer to the bottom surface. This gives a pronounced curve to the line. I cut away the ragged remains of the hinge from both the wing and the aileron. The aileron was then taped to the wing and marked out for four mylar hinges. Using the faint line of the original moulded hinge, I cut matching slots in the wing and aileron using a balsa knife. With the hinges in place and the aileron fitted, I glued the hinges with aliphatic glue. Now there's just one more coat of primer/sealer and a final sanding all over before adding some coloured trim here and there.

Today the tail plane/elevator, fin/rudder were finally fitted and glued with 60min epoxy. Bit fiddly as the moulded locations were slightly out, and I hadn't tried a dry assembly. As moulded the tail plane was a full 15mm out of alignment, shaving off a small slice from the locator did the biz, and a quick wipe with acetone on a paper towel cleaned the balsa knife. This afternoon I checked the alignments and was happy that nothing had moved. Getting the rudder and elevator pushrods moving was fun, I should have removed them and plugged the guide tubes before slopping stripper all over the place. They finally yielded to firm pressure, and moved freely after the rod ends were scraped clean. All the controls were coupled up, a Lemon Rx six channel lightweight receiver and satellite was fitted. Sliding the battery into its compartment took ages, and when it was finally in place, the canopy wouldn't close properly. Assembling the wing to the fuselage is another fiddly job, can't thread the servo wires with the battery in place. I'm going to modify the aileron connectors using the Easy Glider 4 system, where the connectors are exposed when the wing is assembled, no threading wires through small gaps. Finally with everything plugged in and switched on, the control surfaces were set, and cycled, the motor was run and the fail safe tested. Just the canopy and aileron connections to sort out. I was going to use an old FlightPower battery, but I think it would be better to use a Zippy Compact 2S 1500mAh. Its half the size of the FlightPower with little reduction in capacity. The original Multiplex battery was a 1400mAh NiMh, so the Zippy should be able to cope. I was pleased that the motor ran, although being a brushed and geared unit, it is noisy, and produces a draught rather than the eager thrust of a brushless set-up. I expect the model will climb, but it won't be an exciting event.