Horizontal stabilizer braces are removable from the stabilizer. This photo (above left) shows what it looks like when the magnets meet. Horizontal
piece of wood that joins the struts and hugs the wing’s airfoil—both sides of each strut assembly, by the way. Make sure that the strut assemblies make full contact with the bottom wing as the glue sets up. You can also put painter’s tape across the bottom strut pieces, which connect the two vertical struts, to ensure solid contact with the bot- tom wing while the glue sets up. Prop the airplane in position upside down. Before the glue sets, make any final ad- justments needed to obtain correct geometry by measuring from each wing tip to the back of the fuselage’s tail. We want the measure- ments to be equal. 5. Next day, flip the airplane over and re-
peat on the other end of the struts, except we will not push them all of the way through the wing nor will we create the “buttons” for them with the canopy cement—a concession to appearances. Let set up 6–8 hours or un- til the glue has turned clear. 6. Carefully remove the wing from the fuselage when cured. You will have to spread the wings apart slightly. You can re- move either direction, to the front or to the back. Put the wing safely aside. It’s a good idea to put it back in its box to prevent hangar rash. The finish on the foam is beau- tiful, but fingernails dent it. The decals would probably benefit from a light over- spray of a compatible sealer. 7. Place the fuselage upside down on a
stabilizer assembly in place (above right). Soft aluminum rod that wraps around nylon bushing is screwed into the last fuselage former.
piece of foam rubber and block it in place. I used small weighted cardboard shipping boxes at strategic points along each side of the fuselage. Using another piece of the same thickness balsa as used for the cabane strut bridges, make a piece to span the back of the fuselage opening where the bottom wing will mate. Epoxy in place. You will do the same for a piece at the front of the hori- zontal stab saddle opening after the first piece sets up. We now have the fuselage ready for super magnet mounting, but we will take a break and get the wing and horizontal stab ready to take their super magnets, and we will need a tool to cut through the balsa, plastic and foam, so ... 8. Make a magnet hole-cutting tool. You
will need an aluminum, copper or brass tube the ID of which is approximately the size of the super magnet’s OD. I used a piece of ³⁄₁₆- inch brass tubing about 1¹⁄₂ inches long. You want to sharpen the working end. This can be done with a small flat file and/or emery cloth or sandpaper. Simply bevel the outside of one end until you have a relatively sharp cutting edge. Then use a file to cut a series of “V”s in the sharpened end. These will act like teeth and assist you in cutting neat clean holes in foam, plastic or balsa as you twirl the tool and apply pressure. 9. To locate the proper places for the mag- nets you need to mock everything back up
and use blue painter’s tape to hold positions. Then push a sharp pin or sewing needle through both the wings and balsa magnet saddles at each location for each magnet. These will be your center markers for the magnet hole-cutting tool. Take everything apart. For the plastic skinned foam wings and horizontal stab, put your finger on the opposite side and support the skin and gently rotate the magnet tool from the other side, but don’t pierce all the way through the skin on the other side. You will feel it, as you get close, then stop! Now take the foam out and you will have
the hole for the magnet. Repeat and repeat and repeat. For the balsa sides, you also don’t want to go all of the way through the balsa. An X-Acto knife cleans out the holes nicely. Now comes the greatest secret, which will keep you from going nuts: Mix up some 5-minute epoxy and liberal-
ly fill each hole. (We want it to spill over slightly after the magnets are inserted.) Put magnets on one side of each attachment point, into their epoxied holes. Take clear strapping tape or even Scotch tape and put over the epoxied magnets. Let that set up and keep the tape in place. The part that could put us in the mental hospital is to have an attachment point where you put the wrong pole of a magnet on the opposite side, and instead of attracting each other they repel each other! Trust me, I
Landing gear in place with servo compartment hinged forward (above left) illustrating why the corners of the hatch are cut. Also in view are the horse mane braiding bands and soft aluminum circlips that join both sides
FLYING MODELS
of the flying wires together. Close up (above right) of plywood landing gear struts and aluminum tube guides that are slotted lengthwise and pressed over landing gear wire and then secured with canopy glue.
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