Back to Basics

Thanks Phil, the unsecured connectors have made a lot more work to repair the SE5A. Unfortunate that they were buried in the fuselage, and couldn't be seen unless the servos and battery were removed. With a bit of luck, the SE5A will fly again, it took me a long time to dismantle the wreckage, but with the "bits" cleaned up and stowed in a cardboard box, the rest of the model looks repairable. The engine survived without any damage ,and the damage to the wings is minor, needing only a bit of tweaking and a spot or two of glue. The cabane struts took a bashing and were completely out of shape, fortunately they were torn from their mountings without damaging the fuselage. They have now been invited to assume their original shape with the assistance of a vice and a plastic faced mallet. The front end of the engine cowling was damaged beyond repair so a new "front end" will be needed. A couple of formers yielded to the impact of the "arrival", but will be repaired easily with thin ply doublers. .

Hi Brian - Just doing a bit of catching up - so sorry to read about your SE5A's " incident" on Thursday.
Hopefully you can get enthused sometime to repair her.
I too have some horror stories of
pre-owned models that looked o.k until closer inspection.
Badly soldered battery connections wrapped in insulation tape etc.
Catch up soon.

Regards
Colin.

Needing something fairly easy to do as it was raining, I printed the plans of Moonglow on 21 sheets of A4. Not strictly needed as I already have a one piece plan for the model. My printed version will be cut up as needed to fit on to my building board. Trimming and taping the "tiles" took a while, but the end result was worth the effort. All I have to do now is persuade the Boss that I really do need a small building board indoors, and no, I really won't make a mess....honest. New formers and a bulkhead for the SE5A all marked out and ready to be cut. To fit the new parts to the rather oily fuselage, I'll use IPA to get the worst of the oil off, then heat and lots of dry kitchen paper to absorb as much oil as possible. The new parts will be fitted using a two pack acrylic based glue from DeLuxe Materials. Smells very strong, but sticks like the proverbial to a blanket.

The SE5A has been cleaned up, de-oiled and is ready to have the replacement formers etc fitted, however it'll have to wait a while. I made the mistake of checking the laser cut parts for Moonglow VI, the sight of all that pristine balsa was too much to resist. I convinced myself that it would be "alright" to ease a few parts away from the parent sheet, and see how they fitted. It took a few moments to check, and without really meaning to, I glued up the four pieces that make up two sides for the fuselage. Next day, suitably encouraged by the lack of any complaints from the Boss, I riffled through the contents of my balsa strip box. I knew I had some triangle section as well as a generous piece of beech for the engine bearers. The triangle turned out to be oversize, and the beech was 3/4" X 5/8". I didn't want to wait to have new stuff delivered, so I decided to saw the stock I had to the required sizes. After a false start caused by a damaged bandsaw blade, I finally ended up with four lengths of triangle balsa and a pair of 1/2" X 1/2" beech bearers. Seemed a good idea to cut the formers etc for the SE5A as the bandsaw was set up. I started to cut, then promptly realised that what I had assumed was 1/8" ply was in fact 3mm Lite Ply. Still, no harm done, and marking out accurately is always quite a satisfying job.

The fuselage sides, doublers, triangle section and engine bearers are all glued. Tail plane seating cut. Slight hiccup...I forgot to chamfer the top edges of the bearers where they pass through the tank bay. Could have been worse, very awkward if I'd glued in the formers. I've tried to find out as much as I can about Moonglow on the Internet. Some useful hints about dihedral and length of nose wheel leg, best position for C of G etc. Apart from that there isn't much at all, and even less about the later models (Capricorn and International) that were designed by Mike Birch. Both these models were kitted and were available from either RipMax or Mick Reeves. Sad that there's so little information available. Looking at the attached photos, isn't it amazing what you could get for a quid back in 1968?

Brian wrote:

isn't it amazing what you could get for a quid back in 1968?

40 Mars Bars or 9 packs of fags or 6 pints of beer at least.:lol: