Back to Basics

Its been a funny old day today. The overnight frost made the shed a bit inhospitable this morning, all I did was pop in to see if the fin and rudder had glued up, the three pieces of 1/4" sheet had gone together with no fuss, but all I managed before lunch was to mark the outline, and then with cold and aching fingers went indoors to catch up on a few chores.
As it turned out, things ended up better than I thought possible. Thank you Jon and Kevin for the offers of two Merco 61s. Being a greedy old b****r I'd like to accept both offers, thank you both very much. Fortunately the Moonglow plan has provision for fitting either a Super Tigre 60 or a Merco, and now I can go ahead and plan the build of the model as it would have been in 1968, that means fixed trike U/C and covered in doped heavyweight tissue, but no chance of fitting 20 ounces of radio gear!
By early afternoon the sun had reached the shed and I was able to enjoy a relaxed hour or two sanding the fin and rudder to profile and section. As usual I was enjoying myself so much that I failed to notice that I'd made a mistake in marking out the lower end of the fin. I'd intended to leave the profile slightly long so that I could slot the centre of the tail plane and "let in" the fin. I prefer to do that rather than just perch the fin on top of the tail plane. I glued in a small piece of 1/4" X 1/8" balsa to patch in the mistake. I'm sure it won't notice after its sanded and tissue covered.

My broadband/Internet finally relented and allowed me to contact Balsa Cabin and place an order, yesterday morning they sent me confirmation. Now I have to wait until they contact me for payment. I really wanted to finish the wing before I made a serious start on the rest of the Kadet, I thought of getting a couple of sheets of balsa from an alternative supplier, but it wasn't economical, balsa sheets around £3 for two, postage £10.90! To keep busy I was "tidying up" (keeping out of my wife's way). There's a box of "stuff" on the shelf, just odds and ends of covering and left overs from other builds. There was a sheet of balsa, it was 1/16" X 3" and just enough to complete the L.E sheeting, fortunately I went by the actual thickness of the sheet rather than the info stamped on by the supplier.

Hi Brian - many of us have stocks of raw material in case you rum out of other material - also just l Just wondered if Probuild are open for click and collect ?

At present they are not for "walk in shoppers". You can understand why though due to space limitations

The wing structure is now complete, bit of gap filling to do on the underside sheet, and horror of horrors! Somewhere inside the centre section sheeting is a plastic headed pin. No amount of shaking and tweaking has persuaded it to poke through a servo lead hole. It reminded me of when I was an apprentice, we were building pressure cabins for the Valiant bomber, some small object had been dropped between the skinning adjacent to the door frame. I was sent to the tool store to get a "five sixteenth ferret". Took the team ages to let me off the hook. Anyway, I wish I had a five sixteenth ferret now, perhaps it could winkle out the errant pin. I really don't want to cut an access panel, perhaps the alternative would be a small magnet on a string. I've yet to cut holes for the servo leads to exit into the fuselage, perhaps the pin will fall out then. Finished the front bulkhead profile, Drilled it and fitted 4mm threaded inserts, attached the engine mount, marked and drilled for the throttle "snake" and the fuel tube. It seemed a pity to throw away my shaky attempt at laminating a cowling, I made a balsa former to support it, made a nose ring from 1/16" ply and glued it on, then with a filling knife I trowelled on a couple of dollops of lightweight polyester filler. This sands easily, so tomorrow, after I've sanded it down, if its acceptable I'll carry on, if not it'll be a laminated balsa and lots of shavings jobbie!

Ah tales of the apprenticeship , "go to the stores for a long weight, "get us a metric bubble for the level will ya" - happy days! My best memory, apart from riding the shaping machine to destruction and launching the acetylene bottle cap into the training room ceiling, was fitting paper capacitors across the socket outlets to the incoming year room soldering stations. Oh and directing the lathe coolant nozzle to the wall isolator switch - everyone did that!