Winter build project: Wolfgang Matt’s ATLAS

Thanks everyone, I'm leaning towards leaving well enough alone, ideally having spotted my mistake I'd like to correct it, but due to where I am in the construction, I'm worried I could easily make things worse. Filling the holes will require punching out the captive nuts that were snugged up with epoxy and I can't get at them from the back anymore, to chip it away, so it would be a case of punching them out and hoping the integrity of everything else holds. The 1.5mm discrepancy would mean drilling up 2.5mm of the plug and 1.5 of the ply, the drill will naturally want to follow the easiest path, especially as it will be done free hand, so the holes might not end up where I want them. I could knock up a guide block to try and minimise the risk, but I'm still hampered by working at the end of a tunnel! and won't easily see what's going on.

And I'm reassured by Jon and Mike's considered opinion that it's unlikely to detract from the flight performance.

I think I'll just put this down to experience and something to really think through for the Aurora or Beetle, i.e. the next build

Thanks again.

Chris

I was going to say at least yours would be unique and then we find out that Mike has made the same mistake

If you have gone that far with the construction, I would definately leave it as is, as Mike has said (or at least I think he did, don't know what TLAR means ) I bet Wolfgang didn't experiment with the centre of thrust in 1mm increments!!

Worryingly, we arrived at the same mistake independently!

TLAR I think stands for That Looks About Right.

Chris001 wrote: Worryingly, we arrived at the same mistake independently!

TLAR I think stands for That Looks About Right.

Ahh....that makes sense then, the f3a model I design and built in the 90's was done with exactly that design philosophy

On the basis you both made the same mistake, there are probably loads of other Atlas' all over the world the same as yours!

So, we are talking 1/16", in real money. The thickness of a carpenter's pencil.

Blimey Phil you're way out, 1/16" is actually 1.5875mm no where near 1.5mm and what use is a pencil? it's far too wide to be accurate, a knife line on the other hand... that's something we can work with, problem is it only shows up on balsa if going across the grain.

Have you finished the furniture building?