Back to Basics

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:

Building Moonglow's fuselage wasn't as easy as I thought. The formers aren't quite the same as the original of 1968, and having the luxury of laser cut ones, I didn't check them. The design has a slight taper to the fuselage in the area of the wing seating, this means that the formers are definitely not "square" to the fuselage sides. I ended up with a distinctly banana shaped fuselage that took several hours to dismantle by gently sawing at the glue joints until they gave way. With the errant former former rectified, I'll re-build the fuselage in a jig. If I hadn't been so lazy in not bothering to dig it out of the back of the shed, I'd have been a bit further advanced in the build .At least I managed to cut a chamfer on the engine bearers, and an 10 oz tank sits in quite nicely and leaves enough room for the throttle wire.
I don't know how thirsty a Merco .61 is, just hope that a tankful will be enough to fly a "Clubman" schedule.

:lol: very inconsiderate of you not to photo your mistake and post in the appropriate section Brian :lol: :lol:

Too ashamed Kevin.
At least it made you laugh.
Quite a lot !
Nice to know that my efforts aren't wasted.
Anyway I don't suppose that'll be the only clanger I'll make.
I'll take a picture of the next one and I won't cheat with "soft focus".

Building a banana shaped fuselage was only the first of two simple mistakes. Fortunately, between preparing to refit the formers, I had another look at the plan. Unfortunately its printed in a very pale grey and is difficult to read. Fortunately the OuterZone PDF A4 prints I had made were good and black, so although the plan dates back to the '60s, its easier to read the notes etc. That's when I found that the front bulkhead (firewall) is further forward when installing a Merco .61. The original design was for a Super Tigre, and is about an inch further back.
Unfortunately the kit cutters didn't allow for this, and the fuselage sides ended short I had to add a couple of pieces of 3/16" balsa to the sides to provide support for the re-positioned firewall.
Naturally I couldn't wait to see if the engine fitted......of course it did! The fuel/ pressure tubes line up and so does the throttle wire.