Curare EP Resurrection

Chris - I can see why some would prefer, if they are capable and confident enough, to build their own stuff sometimes. Making your own mods, strengthening, etc is easy at the assembly stage. Checking a few of my ARFs and found that many have no continuous ply fuselage sides! Wings have balsa ribs! Ply ribs would have added virtually no weight at all. Nothing I can do about it but moan.. :lol:

Moving on, I am making a building jig when the bits arrive from SLEC, to support the Curare fuselage whilst I repair it. Gonna be fun.

In the meantime I have had a go at the wing which is relatively easy. Glued the wingtip back on and cut away the adjacent broken balsa rib. The wing leading edge has a very small solid forward edge and the rest of the profile is made up by the ribs and sheet balsa. Light but avoid crashing/bumping into anything, it will fold in. :whistle:

I have a selection of balsa sheet, tri-stock and profiles which came yesterday from SLEC. I am going to drop in a solid piece of leading edge profile which is virtually near to the wing profile. Sand down and rebate the back edges for new wing sheet to drop in.

PhilF51 wrote: Checking a few of my ARFs and found that many have no continuous ply fuselage sides! Wings have balsa ribs! Ply ribs would have added virtually no weight at all. Nothing I can do about it but moan.. :lol:

Phil

I'm afraid you are showing your lack of building experience here, it is completely normal for ribs to be balsa, the only time you will find ply ribs would be in high stress areas eg supporting wing tubes, retract plates, sometimes root ribs etc.

Modern artfs are generally very well designed structurally, no full length ply reinforcement to balsa fuselages, again completely normal, ply at the front to support engine and wing mounts then balsa from behind the wing would be the norm. They are designed to cope with in flight loads, not impact loads. You could use more ply to make them stronger but you will just add weight and compromise the performance. If you try to make them crash proof they would fly like cr*p.

I tested my Curare fuselage after reading your earlier comments by trying to twist it, but it is very stiff, no need for more reinforcement.

JonTappin wrote:

PhilF51 wrote: Checking a few of my ARFs and found that many have no continuous ply fuselage sides! Wings have balsa ribs! Ply ribs would have added virtually no weight at all. Nothing I can do about it but moan.. :lol:

Phil
I'm afraid you are showing your lack of building experience here

Exactly :pinch:

I probably would've dumped the Curare in the roof space for infinity but I really liked it which is why I am making an extra effort to fix it and get it flying again. and if stuck get some assistance on here.

Then maybe have a go at building a simple kit plane later when there are wet / windy days

Put together the SLEC Building Jig today and now the Curare's fuselage is supported to reduce any more stress on the airframe. Have started to cut away some sheet to view the broken stringers then plan on the best option to drop in new stringers and reinforce the joints. Then create some templates to recreate the broken formers.

Well done, Phil. I'll be good to see this one flying again some time soon.

This afternoon was taken up by recreating the top half of the former that closes off the nose wheel bay and its' main job to locate the wing. Looking at the glue lines it appeared that there may have been two former back to back. One sits into the recess and the outer one is keyed into the fuselage and supports the nose wheel retract bay. Took a fair bit of time using bits of paper and templates then cutting by hand the two 2mm ply formers/doublers. The birch ply is hard work to cut but of excellent quality, made of 4 layers, very sturdy. Unlike my thumb!

Once I had it fitting neatly, I then brought the wing up to it, the dowels having some red blobs of nail varnish to mark exactly where the holes need to be drilled. Holes done and wing fits nicely.

Not sure whether to glue with PVA or epoxy though.