PHOTOGRAPHY: DAVE MITCHELL
Brush some water on the top keel piece (above left) while it’s pinned to the plan, to help set the bend at the nose. Fuselage construction (above right) is traditional keel style, but light. Here, the left side of the fuselage is framed up, and ready to be lifted from the plan. Detail of the underside of the nose area
(below left). Note how the F11 keel pieces have been fitted to form the air scoop—the plans are a little vague here. Rear peg sheeting (below right) in place, as well as the instrument panel and the cockpit decking. Note use of vellum (drafting paper) rather than bond paper for the decking.
covering it will not wrinkle up and distort from the small amount of moisture that the glue contains. Alternately, you could use a spray adhesive like 3M Spray 77, or the old standby, dope. The nose block and spinner assembly
parts are handled nicely in this kit. You can use a length of 1⁄4-inch diameter brass or alu- minum tubing to align all the nose block pieces. Three 3⁄16-inch thick laser-cut parts are provided to make up the male nose plug, each with a 1⁄4-inch hole cut in the center. Wax the tubing, then stack these three pieces on the tube, align, and glue them to- gether. Make sure the tubing is free to be re- moved, but leave it in place. Use this fin- ished plug to align the two formers (N4 and N5) that get glued to one another and to F1 at the nose. Take care not to glue the male nose plug in while you are at it. After this has dried, stack/glue N2 and N3 together on the 1⁄4-inch tube, and glue this assembly to the male nose plug—again mak- ing sure not to glue this plug to N4, and checking that the tube is still free. Note that the laser cutting operation leaves a couple of uncharred lines on the sides of formers N5 and N3. Before the glue has set, use these to align N3 to N5 and thus properly align the removable nose plug assembly to the fuse- lage. Set aside. Carefully run the back of the vacu-formed spinner over a flat sandpaper block until the flash falls away, and then spot-glue the
FLYING MODELS
spinner to F1, centering it as perfectly as you can—F1 is wider in diameter. When the glue is dry, use a flat sanding block to sand F1 flush to the spinner all around. Separate the two parts, then run the sanding block very lightly around the diameter of F1, evenly removing material until it fits tight- ly inside the plastic spinner. When you like the fit, rough up the inside
of the spinner with sandpaper and glue F1 in permanently. F1 also has a 1⁄4-inch hole in the center, so you now can fit this to the 1⁄4- inch tube. At this point you have all the el- ements of the nose assembly aligned and ready for shaping/sanding. Make a pencil line around the spinner back where it meets F2; sand to this when shaping the nose. Re- move the spinner and the 1⁄4-inch tube, and sand the nose to shape as per the plan. The stab and rudder assemblies are con- ventional, and the model will fly extremely well if built to plan. However, now is the time to consider whether or not you are go- ing to mount a DT to your Mr. Smoothie. My advice is yes! Easy Built provides a fuselage sub-former (F9A) for DT installations, but otherwise no instructions for adapting the stab construction for a DT. I will not go into detail in this article, as DT set-ups can be complicated to do and even more complicat- ed to describe. In a nutshell, I built a split stab, joined by
a carbon-fiber spar that runs through two thin plywood bearings mounted in the fuse-
lage sides. A mini viscous timer from Hobby Specialties
www.hobbyspecialties.com was used, and Opelon elastic thread was used for the tensioner (available from
www.jewelry-
supply.com or your local bead shop). The system worked flawlessly on the bench. At the field...?
Eh...more on that later. On to the wing. Working on both the left
and right wing panel at one time, pin the trailing edges to the plan first. Glue up the wing tip assemblies, and glue them to the trailing edge. Position the three bottom spars on the plan, but don’t glue anything yet. Use a straight edge to make sure that your spars and TE meet accurately at the centerline of the wing. Fit and glue the end ribs—these will establish the final position of the bottom spars—then glue in the in-be- tween ribs. Make sure that the joint of the rib ends to the trailing edge are tight and well-glued—there is no notching or rib over- lap here, and after sanding the trailing edge will be quite thin. If you’re feeling cautious, you might throw some gussets in on either side of each rib end. Now you can set the leading edge into the
front notches of the ribs. Try a dry-fit to make sure the LE is straight when fully seated into the notches. A block of wood with a nice straight edge is helpful here. I found the alignment to be very good, with no addi- tional shaving or shimming needed. Once the leading edge is set, the two top spars can be fitted and glued. Leave them long at the
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