Jon bought the airframe 2nd hand, it had previously been registered through the LMA scheme at 21.5kg, but he wanted to try to get it under 20kg as lighter always flies better and it avoided the complication of going through the LMA inspection scheme. A friend who also has one, suggested Jon does a mod to move the engine forward from it’s standard position behind the centre of gravity, to in line with it, moving it forward around 300mm.
This turned out to be a lot of work, but resulted in removing over 500g of lead from the nose to get it balanced. Final finished weight was now 19.8kg. Following the test flights on the 31st August in the film Jon decided to add another 100g of lead as it was a little too tail heavy, so the model is now at 19.9kg.
All of the radio equipment came from Jon's old 40% IMAC model with the addition of a Powerbox Competition and 4 Xicoy air valves for the undercarriage, doors, air brake and wheel brakes. Below are the internal views of the fuselage. All very tidy with lots of space.
Earlier in the month Jon had brought the T33 minus the Wing Tanks (much to ur disdain) up to the field for it's first turbine start up and taxiing and landing gear .tests
Now on the last day of August 2020, partly sunny with intermittent dark threatening clouds and temperature floating around 18 degrees. Light crosswind from the South
Preflight checks and finally the first flights
T33 Shooting Star
