Flying, now Repairing . . .

Finally got an airplane to cooperate, flew three times Saturday,  but banged up the airplane.  Basically, I am rusty, did a stupid thing,  Tried to take off without refueling.  I guess I thought I had done that but did not.  So the engine did not get enough fuel for take and I did some damage to the airplane.

I do like to repair airplanes and have often said, "It is not a good model until it has been repaired at least once.   The damages usually reveal the weakness in the structure, so that the next time the airplane does a better job of survival."  This one was on its second go round.  The wing had the major repair last time and it sustained no damage at all.

The upfront repairs on the fuselage held up well.  Ripped out the landing gear but that was easy to put back in and re-glue.  Yes, I will have some recovering to do, but I am getting good at that.  Put a little lightweight spackling in the cracks and will sand that down smooth.

The back, the empanage (that is a French term for  the tail feathers, the combined rudder and elevator structure) did not survive so well.  It had breaks before and did not break at the repair points but it did tear up the elevator.  Fortunately, I had a salvaged elevator so that is not a big deal to install.  But the structure holding the elevator took a severe hit.  And then I managed to drop the fuselage so that the vertical took a good hit.  That finished off the weak spots.  I will glue those back quickly with CA glue.  That will hold structure in place and then I will (and have started to) cover over the area with a fibreglass patch. 

I have tons of fibreglass picked up at Radio Control swap meet.  I got about 10 yards of the stuff.  It is like any fabric one would buy at a sewing store, comes about a yard wide.  Since I am using pieces about a half a square inch here and there, maybe a patch on the wing splice that is 3 or 4 square inches in area.  That means I have maybe 7 or 8 years of supply.  And I also picked at a swap meet the epoxy for doing that kind of work.  My last buy of that kind of epoxy is almost running out.  So I am set up for repairs for quite a while.

I am also getting good at those kinds of patches too.  Put a tad bit of epoxy under the area to be patched, lay the fibreglass cloth on top, and spread the remainder of the epoxy the top.  Now depending on the bonding of the epoxy to the balsa the patch will be stronger than a glue joint.  Sand it a little bit and recover with Monokote.  Good as new, well maybe a bit stronger and not so pretty as new.

So I will have this bird back into the air by the weekend.  I may put a bigger gas tank in it.  I have a host of those from former aircraft. 

The engine in this bird is a Magnum four stroke .91 cubic inch engine.  It swings a 14 inch prop with a 6 inch pitch.  That is referred to as a 14 X 6 prop.  That is pretty much the standard for that engine.  I may go down to a 13 X 8 prop, roughly the same thrust but gives me more ground clearance for the prop.  The engine will turn a bit faster but not much as prop loading is about the same.  It has a lot of power.

Now back to work.