Hawker Hurricane
The Hawker Hurricane is a British single-seat fighter aircraft of the 1930s–1940s that was designed and predominantly built by Hawker Aircraft Ltd. for service with the Royal Air Force. Although overshadowed in the public consciousness by the Supermarine Spitfire's role during Battle of Britain in 1940, the Hurricane actually inflicted 60 percent of the losses sustained by the Luftwaffe in the engagement. The Hurricane went on to fight in all the major theatres of The Second World War.
My Introduction
I have been looking a round what to build next, all I new it was going to be a warbird at a decent size, and a mate of mine had a part kit of the Mick Reeves Hawker Hurricane at 1/4.5 scale, have given it a good thinking over and after looking at the RC Scale Building Site. there was a good couple of builds and well documented.
Opening the box you get 3 drawings and a very impressive laser cut short kit and some printed pages showing the build in stages. There are a few problems or mistakes that have not been corrected after all these years, so I thought I would make a dedicated page and group all off the mistakes in to one place, so I would if your going to build this great plane have a look at the page so you don't have to rework any of the snags thought the build.
Problems With the Build
Check before you build and save your self time
FUSELAGE BUILD SECTION
DAY 1
First thing to do was to make the top, bottom and sides of the fuz, these came in half's so you had to remove all the inner pieces on the laser cut parts , but don't get rid of them because you will want the four hole in two pieces for the tail, and I found they made good packing when gluing the sides together. Then join the two half's together to create a full piece. you then end up with 2 sides and 2 top and bottom full lengths.
Then join one side with a top and the other side with the bottom, being very careful not to glue the second side round the wrong side , so to be the mirror image of the first half. The Pva glue used is Wicks own Pva it has less water in the glue like other brands and better grab.This ends the first day of build
DAY 2
Now to start putting the side to top together and bottom to Side, the first one is easy they go together very well but you do require packing up the tail because of the shape of the fuz.
The second pair , well don't do what I did twice by fitting the two pieces round the wrong way, but on with the build, At this point I must think about what engine to fit, what others have used and how much lead they needed to add, the three that I have in mind is - Zenoah 62, DLE 61and the DLE 85 all near enough the same size as each other but so different in power and weight as you will see.
DAY 3
Today the two halves go together, and start to put the front section together but that was not straight forward as you will see, the next picture is from the small build instructions and had me trying to understand this next section.
As you can see the first two pictures show a D Former on both this was very confusing, until I went on the Rc Scale Builder on the forum there Is a build by Walter and this made sense, the third picture is what you get in the kit.
Its done for a reason and that's to split the airframe in two for transporting, this will not be split so gluing them together with the 3mm fixings to hold them together wile the glue is drying.
HURRICANE ENGINE SPECS
WEIGHT LENGHT HEAD HIGHT WIDTH COST
Zenoah 62 - weight 2040 grams - length 172mm - height 140mm - width 133mm - cost £370.00
DLE 61 - weight 1750 grams - length 240mm - height 126mm - width 100mm - cost £370.00
DLE 85 - weight 2550 grams - length 200mm - height 140mm - width 120mm - cost £489.00
Here is the two part for the engine bay , the engine bay its self requires cutting back to take the engine, " which engine" As you can see by the spec there quite close to each other, the problem is the Zenoah 62 has 13Kg of thrust and its the most quite engine out of all of them but only 4.5horsepower, the Dle has 8 horsepower almost the same size as the Zenoah and a little heavier which could be good to save adding lead. these are the two I am looking at, so I have cut back the engine box sides by 30mm.
This is correct for the Dle 85 but all I have to do is add a bit more ply on the firewall to take the Zenoah 6, but the problem is the Dle engines are loud, this would mean spending a lot of money with Bisson in the USA, but the dustbin type silencer normally catches the bottom of the firewall, the Zenoah would require the long torpedo type silencer from Toni Clark which is 270cm and 60 thick, I hope now the problem I have is starting to make sense.
over the next few days I will see if I can build in the Toni Clark silencer, then all I need is the silent 24 inch prop to give me max power.
The next two pictures shows the marking out on reducing the engine sides, all I did was measured every thing by 30mm so there is now a duplication of what's on the front. You can see where I have cross lined the bits that need removing.
Now for the shelves for the engine bay, these also require 30mm cut out of them, but cut it in the middle so you keep your pegging. And the 30mm bit you cut out use to go across the joint.
DAY 3
now to put more parts on the fuz and also start to use some balsa triangle strips in the adjoining corners and start to make the fire wall, which consists of 3 pieces to laminate together.
Motor talk again ,after talking with Gerherd from the Toni Clark company about horsepower and exhaust systems and with Bisson in the USA about exhaust systems also with friends , I have come to the conclusion that the Zenoah 62 would not be right for he job and the DLE 85 would be the one I will go with, mainly because the over all weight can not be determined yet. I can't go by Mick Reeves all up weight because he builds very light and my Hurricane won't be as light as his.I'm hoping that the slightly heavier engine will stop me adding any extra lead up front. and the length of he engine to the Zenoah 62 is the same without the suspension bracket that they supply, the poer will be more than I require to fly the Hurricane but thats what the throttle is for at the end of the day.
DAY 5
Day 4 was lost because of missing parts out of the kit, this is because I bought it second hand, but thanks to Mick Reeves he cut all the bits and I got them the following day at 8 am, so got stuck in today, I took on board what Walter had done to stiffen up the frame with balsa former's across the middle of the fuz, the rear two were 3/6 balsa sheet, and the rest moving to the wing section are 1/4 balsa sheet.
When fitting the top formers I found it easy to do both the furthest top formers then the middle one, once the formers have glued dry fit the top strut along the formers, then the rest of the formers can be fitted and held in to place
I have tried to show two angles of the two cockpit formers they sit either side of the base box section at an angle fixed by the long top ply edging former this can be clear seen in the photo's
It can be seen in the picture below I have kept a weight all the time I was building the fuselage just to keep it flat.
DAY 6
Now to fit the outer formers to the fuz it would be a good idea to dry fit each group of formers when you fir each side of the fuz, as when I was fitting the formers found the number on the former was not on there.
I use Wicks own brand of Pva glue. I was told a long time ago that the grab of this glue is really good owing that there is less water in this wood glue as there is to most, and for doing the former its perfect and allows you to do all the former's all in in one go.
The two formers shown on the side of the fuz on the right , this took a little time to sort this out as I thought the two formers were the wrong size but after going over loads of pictures on the RC scale builders forum, I was able to come up with the answer, as the picture shows.
Making the higher of the two ends on each of these former's to the top and the lower end goes to the edge of the wing seat this is the best you can do. There are a few bits that former's or other laser cut bits that are short, I will group these up once the build is done and make a special section to cover all the not quite correct bits.
Above shows the stringers being fitted, I'm taking them with thin zap then will go over with Pva with a brush. What I have noticed when building this Hurricane from the plan that it's a builder build as there are almost no instructions but enough if you have built a few planes before and a load of common sense, and of course loads of photo help from others that have built it in the past, so I hope you all don't mind me going over board in areas talking about putting this together and hopefully adding some help on the the way for others in the future.
Stringers now cleaned up, the ply sheet you can see in the top right picture is me trying to see the best place to fit the servo tray it's looking more like at the top of the box section behind the pilots set former will be the finishing position. this should allow any snakes to run along the top of the box section down the whole length of the fuz and in to the last section at the tail, also the last of the positioning can be done for the rudder and elevator controls not forgetting the rear wheel in this section.
I was not going to go down the road of fitting the servo's like they have been done in the other builds in the tail sections ,because the servo's used very Micro servo's and used on park fliers. This in my eyes was not strong enough to do the job, the plane is coming out between 16 Kg to 18 Kg park fliers are max between 2 and 3 kg.I will be going with 5 Kg servo's probably Hitec 224 mighty servos as this will fit into the tail section with no modifications for the rudder controls I will be using Hitec 645 plus all the Ailerons and flaps and the motor throttle and choke will have a slightly less powerful servo maybe a Hitec 322's.
Tail end all tidied up with a fine razor saw shape is now taking on
and Engine bay dry fitted this is one of the places I will be adding extra weight to the frame , I think that putting any petrol engine on this frame requires some sort of beefing up other wise vibration could become a problems and with vibration come noise and this is something we must always look at when building any plane. Plus when I got the re cut bits from Mick Reeves the bulkhead was a full one and in the kit was a half one,, which is the other reason i'm doing this like it is.
I do think looking at the engine bay and box section I will need to cut away of the bottom front under the middle shelf to allow the mounting of the exhaust can. but we will see when I get to that point in the future of the build.
Now for the fin and tail build, these builds were very straight forward with a few minor cock ups during the build.
RUDDER,TAIL AND ELEVATOR BUILD SECTION
Now for the fin and tail build, these builds were very straight forward with a few minor cock ups during the build. What I did like is building two half's and then joining them together, I like this idea very much
This shows the two half's put together with Pva glue and just held together with the clamps.
The over hanging thin sheets to cover the elevator hinge has now been placed.
The rudder construction is very straight forward but is a little flimsy so further in the build I will stiffen it up, once this side is done turn over and do the second side.
Here shows that both thin sheets for the fairings fitted and a good view of the mini servo position fort the elevator and rods to fit the tail together.
Like the rudder the elevators are built in the same way you do one side first then turn it over and complete the second side.
Elevator comprises of flat balsa sheets stuck together, I always do this on grease proof paper to avoid damaging the drawings.
If you look closely at the elevator you will see a gap between the tail section and the L shape elevator, this is caused by the elevator base sheet being 10mm to long on the L section, once removered by 10mm all is fine and teh elevator then fits with the tail.
The rudder is now showing the hinge blocks now fitted and the rudder post is now ready to be rounded of and small blocks cut out where the robart hinges will fit.
Here is the tail joined by the carbon rods and the tail has not had the 10mm cut back as you can see the gap between the tail and the elevator, also I have started to put the from sheeting on the tail but don't do both sides yet as there is more work and parts to for the carbon rods to be finally completed.
this next group of pictures show the extra balsa fitted to the tails in the top right picture and the rudder and elevator sections in the lower two photo's, this is to stop the twist that you get for being very flimsy. This is done with slightly smaller ribs so the will not show when covered I used 3/16 balsa to create them with, now they are a lot stronger and will not twist at all.
The elevators are still not complete the hinging assembly is still missing along with the fibre boards that are supplied.
CENTRE WING SECTION BUILD
The first thing tat is required is to double up on the No's 4 former and the front and rear spars, and also the retract bracket ply part number ? this part is tripped and laminated together also you need to fit the M3 nut serts four of in each completed part.
The centre wing section looks straight forward but you require a little pre-prepping before gluing it all together, It's a bit of a puzzle to put this group of formers together through the front and rear spars, so a dry fit is essential to this part of the build, starting with all the formers checking the they all fit onto the front and rear spars
In the above two pictures you can see I have some wood screwed to the bench, this is to give me a square section , all I did was place one piece of straight wood length on the bench the add the assembly of the 2 outer and the front and rear formers dry fitted. Then with some squares place the frame squarely against the first piece of wood and once all squared up place the second piece of straight piece of wood and screw down on to the bench. Re checking all is square and straight , I also add two pieces of ply on the front of the bench so the tip of the centre wing section butts up against it to create a perfect square.
You start off with the No's 1 centre former first the the 2 number 2's and then Number 3's, do not fit the outer Number 4's antil these are all dry and use a square on every rib to spar joint to keep everything square.
When you start to glue the pieces together I would also add the thinner rear spar as well to square up the rear tips and also add weight to rear half of the formers so the lower tabs fitted to the former sit on the deck.
Now what I didnt want to happen is what happened next, the ribs would not go through the front spar , this is because the kit I bought was an old kit I got in touch with Mick and Jim and agreed I had a old kit and would need the new front paer and also new number 3 formers as the motor had changed for the retract system.
Luck had it I received a email from Jim Reeves to say my retracts are made so I made a trip over to Mick and Jim to collect my retract system and the new formers plus the wing poles, If you every get the chance to go and see Mick and Jim go because they are very nice people and I learnt a lot about the build plus I could fire all my questions I had about the build and see Micks Hurricane close up. You get a better feel for what you have to accomplish. and not to mention a nice cup of tea.
Ok now you can see on the front spar the positions for the motors for the retracts, now you can understand why the number 2 former is in two pieces, the from part of the former goes on after you have fitted the motor's, now the outer formers number 4's can be fitted but you will also need the retract mount ply's as well. Now it can start to get messy with the Pva glue. You can also see the front ply pieces that I screwed to the front of the bench to complete the squareness of the centre section.
Plus remember to keep the weight on the back of the formers to maintain the shape of the centre section.
Now for the retracts, this is made easy By Jim Reeves as they come already fitted to a part section of the from spar all tested and setup, the only extra work is to fit the nutserts in a few places which is shown on the pre-build sections.
The pre sent spar sections can be seen on the right , and is very detailed, the retracts the controls of the retracts are done by a small plate of ply with two micro switch's fitted to is and a hole to fit a mini servo, as I want to make the retracts work a bit more scale Jim supplied two of these small control boards, and all I need to do is have the two boards working together through the SG14 Tx but put a delay on one of them. I'm still not sure where I am going to fit them yet, Mick fits them under the belly pan in the wing section, I will come back to this very soon.
The motor to power the retracts is 12 volt in the video I'm using a Onbo 3 cell 11.1v, the system is very quite and well made so well worth the money. So all you have to do is transfer the system over to your new built centre section.
Just had t osee what the centre section look like on the fuz, yes its getting bigger.
On the picture above you can see a gap between the wing section and the fuz section , if you look closer enough you can see a step down on the wing seat near the centre section this amount will probably require a balsa fillet to take up the gap I will know more when I get on to that bit.
Mick supplies some plastic M6 threaded brackets to get modified I have opted for good old M6 nutserts on some well glued 1/4 ply , with some bracing pieces, but if I was doing it again I would have not put the ply plate level with the wing seating , I would put it lower so when fitting of the centre wing section it doesn't interfere.
And te same to the centre wing section all at 20mm wide
The servo tray is now in made from 3 mm birch ply sitting on the side box section and glued with Pva, the two servos are rudder and rear wheel plus the receiver will also go there away from the engine and electronic ignition unit. The servo's I am using for these two are Hitec 645 metal gears.
The centre wing section is now ready for top covering with 3 mm balsa and not forgetting I still have to find the best way of fixing the outer wing section to this centre section p,lue I still have to fit the wing pole outer sleeves.
Because of the very good fitting of the wing section sheeting the top of the wing was so easy, no adding any filling to make the ribs level. the way I sheet is to join 3 sheets together with thin zap super glue on grease proof paper so nothing sticks. give a light sanding over the glued joints and now you have a 12 inch sheet or 300 sheet which ever way you work. The second picture I choose to only do 2 sheets because of the curve of the leading edge, this would be to much of an hand full to manage the curve as well as the last of the flat sheeting of the wing.
To do the curve of the wing on the leading edge I first joined 2 sheets of 3mm or 1/8 balsa again using the grease proof paper, and added some 6mm or 1/4 balsa strip to the inner side of the spar to allow joining of two pieces of sheeting to sit on once fitted. then measure from the join to the over side of the spar and cut the joined 3mm or 1/8 balsa sheet to size, then soak the outer side of the balsa sheet with water, and after 15 minutes start to manipulate the balsa sheet into a curve then when happy glue it on.
The ply board shownng here is for the retract system that Mick / Jim supplies I had to in my kit as I wanted to stager the retract system when operated , I am also going to make a few more of these to use for the landing lights as only one of the anding light come on at a time not both together and this is the easist way of doing it o a swithon the tranny. I have bought the same micro switchs from RS Components I will show all parts bought extra in a section on the own, along with the wiring of them tha is supplied by Mick / Jim.
As you can see the curve of the leading edge did split a little on one side but with a bit of filler all is sorted and job is done just requires a little light sanding. you will notice I did this in 3 pieces , this was because of making the job easier as the smaller the balsa piece of sheet to soak and bend is much less stress and messy to do. I was going to lease the middle section open but I was dry fitting the moulded piece that fits there and it really requires the middle sheet to be fitted.
Now to start putting some shape the rear of the wing section and give all the joints in the top sheeting a light sanding
This is my first attempt of the curve on the rear of the wing section there is no piece to do this with you will need to take the curve from the drawing supplied I still need to play with mine to get it correct.
I have now jumped back to the tail section and the stitching while every thing else is gluing, this is one of the things I have never done and after looking over the forums I am very excited to try, the string I am using is Kit string which is .6mm thick and very cheap to but and some Thin super glue I use Zap and activator, and not forgetting a heavy weight, all will be explained.
First you spray the Ribs with activator this works better if you let it dry before Appling the super glue that way the glue doesn't crystalize when using, now lay your string out and put the heavy weight on one end while you hold the other and place the fin under the string. Now pull down on to the fin and drop a small drop of super glue on each rib over the string, then cut the string and before doing the next row you could mark a 10mm gap with a pencil or do it by eyeall along the rib till you get to the other end.
You will waste a lot of string but the final look is worth it, now with a sharp scalpel blade cut between the ribs so just leaving the glued string in tact.
I'm now jumping to the tail which I found a problem with I was not going to use the carbon tube that comes in the kit, this was because the idea behind it was you glued one end into one side of the tail and mount a fixing screw on a nutsert on the other side of the tail shown in the picture with the pencil pointing to the place you would need to make the hole for the screw to lock in the other side and keep the two tail sections together. I really didn't like tis idea because if at any time the carbon tube broke you are stuck and would have to remake the tail section, the way I am going is fitting a 10mm fibre glass tube this would mean opening out the hole to 10mm and gluing these in and then using a 8mm carbon tube that if this get broken you just cut another. How I fix the tail planes together will be shown later when I get there.
Now continuing with the problems on the tail I found that when I dry fitted the two tail pieces together they were very tight and was not a good fit, this was because the line of the glass tube was not square to the rear trailing edge of the tail on both tails so they didn't match each other by 2mm at one end, this was easily got over by making the holes slightly elongated and making a few more ply washers for the tube to reposition the tube into its correct position, but make the washers so they butted up against the rear former for added strength. these I will still leave as dry fit till I mount the tails on the fuz, but before I can do that I need to get the centre wing section to the fuz and bolted .
Now both tails slide in nice and sit square on the bench.
Here are the two servo's that will be going into the tails, they are Ripmax all metal servo's double bearing with a 4.85kg pull at 6v or more at 7.5v and coreless ( Coreless Quartz QZ304 ).
This is the bit I have been waiting for to put the technique to the test, I covered the fin with solartex first as you would normally do it then when it came to ironing around the string on the ribs I started at one end and used my figure to hold down the heated part of the covering between the stich, this seemed to work ok but did hurt after a while, then with the scale stitching strips I got from Mick / Jim Iron that on after and this was the result.
Now the Robart hinges are fitted and the fin dry fitted its coming together.
The flaps are next, I opted not to use proskin here and go back to balsa , between the 3 ribs here they are not level, once I had mad it level I layed a 1/26 or 1.5mm balsa sheet as the base and did this to both sides, but working out with the size of the ribs you had to cut out of spare balsa and the 3mm or 1/8 balsa sheet I was going t cover the flap with that it all fitted flush.
What I did notice is the retract area required beefing up as if the retract was to be knocked back for any reason this would cause the retract to twist and snap the outside former and would crack above the re infilled piece of ply that has been put back in the former. now the in fill is back with this done the strength is getting there, |I also added two angled pieces of 1/4 ply to be placed under the retract plate, this can be seen in the next picture.
In the next 3 pictures I have boxed in the retract area with 1/16 or 1.5mm balsa
The flaps is the next part to do, this caused me a few problems, as all the forums I have been using to help with the build did not follow the Mick Reeves drawings, what everyone else has done is cut short the flaps so they don't go past the second rib, but if you look closely at this part of the drawing the line of the flap goes past the second rib by 12mm this means the flap comes up against the scoop.
The ribs and the sheet balsa is all 1/8 or 3mm thick balsa, the capping is from 1/32 birch ply, do not go by the picture on the drawings its not the correct size.
As you can see the flaps come across the second former and at the moment they both sit on top of the 2 former.
He is a closer look at the flap
Now to cover the centre section between the flaps so I have a edge to work with when fitting the flaps, the grain is going from front to back on these pieces so the balsa bends easy.
Now we have something to work against as a guide, the right hand side rib will require altering to allow the flap to seat correctly, this is shown in the left hand picture, this is cut and filed to suite the flap that is made so when its correct it will sit flush with the sheeting around it. also in the picture can be seen the cut out for the control horn and will be opened enough to take the full swing of the horn to give you the correct flap working angle.
The horns are made from glass fibre board when made I drilled a couple of holes in the part that will be glued to give some grab to the horn and also roughed it up a bit with a file for the glue to take.
Then a slot is made and a backing piece of balsa placed on the outer edge to hold the glue in , then used 5 minute epoxy then placed the horn in the hole.
I then lined the 3 hinges that are supplied and marked them out, you will notice that right now there is a drop at the rear of the flap to the rest of the wing section, this is got over by using packing balsa to bring the level the same to allow you to do this part of the job accurately
I have filed out the slot for the hinges plus enough depth to take a piece of 1/32 ply to give the fixing screws something to fix on other then balsa, so the finished item is totally flush with the balsa covering. then glue with Pva glue
I have screwed and glued with 5 minute epoxy but before doing that I placed a piece of 1/64 ply between the flap and the wing hinging point to give just a little gap for easy of moving .
The servo plate is made from 3mm ply and the servo's I have used is my old faithful Hitec 645mg they also have the perfect arm for the job that being 40mm long.
Now both of the flaps are working and ready to be set up with the corrct movement and require a final sanding when the rest of this wing section is complete before glassing.
Almost completed the rest of the covering I have done this in one sheet, retract system to make it look scale.
Here shows the wheel wells cut out
The servo cut out required a little more to open it out for the size servo that I will use. I took a bit out of both ends to keep the position central.
this picture shows the servo cut out reinforced to give the end rib some strength with such a hole cut in to it.
I have decided to join the two tails together with a piece of fibre board so a small piece of ply is laid across between the outer and next rib for he fibre board and the m3 spiked nut to be fixed to.
Now the coreless servo is mounted in the tail
three out of the four nutsert now fitted so I'm no able to put the two halves together.
I will have to do more photo's in the dark they come out pretty well. Here are the two halves complete with servos and stitching and all sanded.
The elevator system has taken longer then anything else so far, getting the geometry correct and still making it so the tails come off with the least of hassle And as the pictures show above I forgot to make a entrance hole for the servo cables.
The above pictures show my original way of doing the system but this did not work very well plus the linkage fouls the fin.
The second attempt was much better but now the linkage is going from the bottom of the tail under the tail glass tubes and is much harder to fit the linkage on and off each time , I also made up a couple of horns out of fibre board to give the right angle for the movement.
This piece of 1/8th or 3mm ply is for the fibre board that will keep the two half's of the tail together, its set in flush so it will not be noticed and a M3 spike nut fitted underneath and when the fibre board is fixed to the ply plate fill a round the fibre board with balsa till flush, this will give the cloth something to stick too.
Once the two tails are tight together and the fibre strap is fitted the fin can now be fitted , firstly fit the base for the fin, this is stuck with 5 minute epoxy on the end of the base plate against the fuz at the tip and also on the two fibre tubes and around the round part of the base at the rear. Its kept level by the two fibre tail posts, once this has gone off then for the fin its self.
This is the gluing points
Use both of the set squares to use as a guide to keep the fin straight and also use your eye down the centre from the fire wall.
What I have done here is thicker the trailing edge of the elevators and the rudder as the centre sheet that they are made from is quite thin, This also allows the covering something to be attached too. As I had damaged the trailing edge so many times already.
Here is the rear light mount fitted t the rudder with a pair of wires fitted ready for completion.
The rear wheel mount is made from 3mm ply and stuck to four sides of the rear of the fuz which stifferns this part of the fuz which is not to bad.
Now the rear wheel mount is fitted I can now put the rest of the body strips on
This is the side panel , I have noticed a few people have made this separate then fitted I have opted to do it as one and later show the panel in the finishing. This is made from 3mm balsa sheet.
Now to start the sliding canopy rails, this took longer than I thought as there is no information on this part of the build and when I looked at other builds that people have shown , they also did not to show any part of this build. But I did see a completed picture of the Mick Reeves Hurricane and it shows the brass channel on the top of the cockpit side .
the former either side of the cockpit there is a double cut out the lower I used for the balsa strip and the higher I used for the brass channel. Then I laid the brass channel in the slots on the former's and then started to create the channel in balsa around the brass channel , the first picture shows the backing balsa sheet on the rear of the strips of balsa on the fuz, the second picture shows the in fill balsa either side of the brass channel once fitted to get the shape, and the third picture shows the brass channel fitted. I have not fixed the brass channel yet as I'm not sure how far to take the channel.
The sheeting of the rear of the cockpit is done in 1/64th ply this bends so well and very easy to work with.
Now for the side sheeting to be done this I used 1/32nd ply, I used thick cyno and pva glue to fix these panels on and also activator for the cyno. The sheets were put on with a activator spray the sheets along the top and bottom, then run pva glue along the ribs except the top and bottom runner, these get thick cyno on. Then you lay the top edge down first and hold there for a few seconds, then slowly run your habd down the ply sheet to the bottom where the cyno is also waiting then hold down again for a few seconds, and repeat this for the rest of the sheets.
The fire wall and engine mount requires beefing up to take the big lump going on the front, this is done with some pine wood 1/4 curved from any diy shop, I will come back to this part of the job later.
As this part is not intentional to the plans the parts supplied to do this part or area wont fit, so I just got some 3mm ply put it against both inner formers, then cut some slots on both sides and fit some cross members with once again some 3mm ply at 20mm deep then sheets with 3mm balsa.
Top box completed and fitted most of the electronics will fit in here with the fuel tank under in a separate compartment.
Now for the first parts of the moulded clear plastic parts the rear wheel section part is made slightly over size, I have also fitted a bit more balsa for the plastic part to stick too and glued with gorilla glue.
The rear of the part adjacent to the rudder was added all the way up to the fin, now the rest of the fin had to be completely made by me from some block balsa as the parts that come in the moulded kit is for the sea harrie so there are breaks for the hook system, I did not want to go that way , so I glued some balsa together and shaped it. But the I fitted some sheeting to stick the part too.
I have had to cut a section from the rear wheel skid fairing to allow the tail wheel to be fitted and also to get too if required for any slight adjustment and blow you can see the cut section refitted and what is not shown is its fixed down with a couple of servo screws. The flat clear plastic top next to the removable balsa section will be cut out with a small round dremmel sanding tool to allow the tailwheel to be fitted.
The tail moulded glass parts are really good , they just require trimming to suite, to allow the elevators to work the tails don't go fully in, and you can get round that by allowing the moulded parts to stick out a bit further but you must keep that in mind so you don't cut it back to much, you need to do this to allow the servo linkage to get to the elevator, its quite tight but works well, this did take me quite a while to work this out and looking at the forums. Plus what really did help was taking a trip over to Micks to have a good look at the things you cant see in photos. The moulded parts were stuck with Zap thin it ran in really nice but remember to roughen up the moulded parts first to give the glue something to adhere to.
This is another moulded glass part that did need a little trimming but fits great and saves so much work I can remember building a DB Spitfire and I hated making all these bits from balsa, you can also see that I filled in with balsa, to allow the moulded parts to stick to something and also the covering.
Here is the rudder horn with the linkage wire attached ,and glued in with epozy and the linkage is out of the bits kit.
The tail and fin is now finished I have fitted balsa to support the moulded glass parts and for the solar tex to stick too. and the paired wire for the light.
The next part is to add some balsa sheeting in pieces between the two skins of the fuz where the wing seating Is to allow the epoxy to stick too, I used 3mm balsa sheeting so it allows a bit of sanding
Adding the fairings to the fuz is made easy by Mick Reeves buy suppling fibre glass pre made pieces, now some known models have tried this and failed but it can't be said for these ones, Mick has down his homework and come up with some very good fitted pieces. But before we can fit them some prep work is required first, in the protection of the centre wing section balsa sheeting, so first get some brown packing tape and cover the wing section and go quite over the top to the wing section is clean from glassing. then wax or polish the tape to repel glass epoxy, then cut 4 off strips of 4oz fibre cloth don't be tight on the cloth give a good width because we will be cutting back after. To get some idea how far you will come out with the glass parts dry fit to give you an idea and then give 30mm more to take up the glass epoxy spreading and mark it on the brown tape, now lay the glass cloth down and with a good brush , brush on the epoxy and try not to stretch the cloth, this is done by always allowing a good amount of epoxy on the brush each time. once this is done over the whole lenthg lay the second cut piece of cloth over the top of he firstand with the same brush with some epoxy on try and push the first coating through to the second layer, this is don on both sides now come s the hard part sit the fuz on the wing and fix the both together with its fixing bolts, and the allow to stick together.
When the glass epoxy has gone off it should be nice and smooth this will need a bit of sanding to rough it up to allow the next part of gluing to take part, now in the first picture above you will see some balsa pre shaped pieces this is not has hard as it looks but did take me quite a while to do on the first side so I didn't muck it up. First I dried fitted the piece that fits underneath as shown , this is a guide for the first part of 3 that we are now gong to fit, the first piece of balsa that has black on it is where I started, this shape is got from the first piece by sitting the glass piece on balsa and draw around the piece to get the curve and hen dry fit for size, once happy position and do the next piece by copping the first piece and adjusting slightly you will get the hang of this very quickly once you have a few try the glass piece your going to mount on the balsa pieces and make any slight adjustments, once happy mark where the balsa pieces are and glue one at the time with thick zap glue. Now fix down with servo screws as shown in the second picture and then do the same to the second piece of glass fairing, when completed with a marker pen mark around the two pieces to make it easy to refit into the same position.
Then I followed suite and did the third part then mark out and screw down with servo screws, then once all three are fitted dry , remove the first one and rough up the inner side to allow the glue to stick, Then spray the fuz with water and use the gorilla glue on the glass piece, then refit the piece and continue with the second piece. you will notice that I have put grey tape at the edge of the moulded parts , this was to stop the glue spreading onto the ply and balsa.
Time to start the two outer wings, and no surprise the main spars each come in two halves I stuck them together with thick cyno.
The wing kit that has been laser cut is a great jon they all fit well, I did find that the drawing was a little short by 5mm, so this put the ribs out all along the wing section.
The small blocks that can be seen were used to keep the front and rear spars straight, made from cheap pin wood.
Now for the leading edge sheet supplied with small peg holes laser cut out to fit on to the ribs, great idea makes the build a lot more easier, now for the rear sub spars.
Now the wing tips this got a bit confusing because the end part of both front and rear spars are too long to allow the two piece ply arc to fit, but there are also balsa ribs for the same section. the ply two piece is pegged in to the last rib to create the correct shape and position so I decided to use the balsa ones as well and glued one of the to the ply spar but not before cutting the end of because its to long, you just have to use the two piece ply bits and alter the rest to fit as the ply bits lock into position.
Now for the web capping on both sides and trialling edges. now to dry fit the wing tube sleeves and do a dry fit to the fuz before fitting the servos and wiring for the light
These are the first pictures from all the first time the wings tails and fuz all fitted together, and I'm well happy with the outcome the wing sections fit perfect, I have said it once and I will say it again this build is one of the most easiest builds I have ever done and it all fits very neatly. Off to see John tomorrow for a second set of eyes on the wings before sheeting this week.
I had to get me in the photo to give an idea of the Hurricanes actual size.