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There is a local FAC contest (Squadron 69) this Sunday for WWI (Mass Launch), Embryo, and Half Wakefield. I have my own Embryo, and have no plans to build a Half Wakefield, but thought I had a qualifying WWI model. (Let me rephrase that comment about the Half Wakefield. I have several plans for them I just don't plan to build one.) Anyway, I found that my ancient WWI model was in no condition to be restored, let alone fly, so I decided to build a new one for the contest. I had a #202, SE5A, kit on the shelf so I decided to build that "box stock" (Will have removable nose block, more aggressive prop, reinforced landing gear, F.A.I. Tan rubber, and colored tissue but other than that stock.) for the contest. While it's not the most competitive choice, they fly much better than one might think and, I've seen them do quite well in competition.
I started it about a half hour before I had to leave to pick up my wife this evening. I was using a right angle tool left over from one of my kits for alignment, odorless CA glue, and kicker. The photos show how far I got.
I had 15 minutes between coming home from dropping my wife at work and leaving for a dentist appointment so I decided to do the other side of the fuselage. I used some laminated blade tools from one of my kits as guides to make sure the other half of the formers were in alignment. They happened to be in my building supply carrier but crafter's Popsicle sticks work just as well. I clamped them to the already aligned former with clothes pins, laid the half former against the guides, used a small Scuncii hair clip to clamp it down and applied glue. I find that the little Scuncii hair clips make very useful low pressure clamps.
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I finished the other side in 15 minutes and left for the dentist. Hint: half height formers are easier to install if you do it after the side keel in installed.
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After the dentist and running a few errands it was time for lunch. Made the post while eating lunch.
I only had two hours more to work on it. Got the empennage, landing gear legs and lower wing done. Since I will have all day tomorrow I should have it framed covered and assembled tomorrow night. The trick will be to get it rigged and test flown on Saturday. FAC requires full rigging in this class.
Had a couple of problems with the kit. Most Guillow's kits have an instruction booklet to aid in construction and point out any peculiarities in the particular kit. The booklet, if there was one, is missing. No real problem though since the plans have notes and I have years of familiarity with the Guillow's manner of doing things. I don't think many modelers think of it, but one of the real values of Guillow's kits is consistency.
The other problem was that the kit was short two pieces of the 1/8" X 3/16" material used for spars and leading edges. Instead there was a piece of !/4" X 1/4" stock that has no use in this kit. Fortunately, I have some 1/8" X 3/16" in my stash. There is no room for mistakes with the amount of strip stock supplied. The piece of 1/16" X 3/32" stock at the tip of the Exacto knife in the photo is all that was left after I finished the stabilizer and tail.
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I used the right angle tool, again, to make sure the ribs were upright.
One of the basic constants of any project is Murphy's Law, usually stated. "If it can go wrong, it will." While I still will plow along an finish it quickly, It won't be flying this Sunday. I did get a good three hours work on it this morning, but when I went to lunch with my wife, which we do every Friday, Murphy's Law went into effect. It started when the POS system at the restaurant went into panic mode and refused to process a cash sale let alone a credit/debit card. (Actually, I found the situation rather amusing since I used to program, sell, install, and support POS systems, but I kept that to myself.) That wasted a half hour and it went downhill from there. Instead of the 4 hours I expected to put in this afternoon my work time amounted to about 45 minutes. It has gone together, quite smoothly, with only six and a half hours work in it thanks to the extremely accurate Guillow's laser cutting. As it stands now, it's framed, sanded and ready for covering. I have an olive green domestic tissue that closely approximates the color of the SE5a drawings on page 21 of "Flying Colors.
I do have a few corrections to my last post. That piece of 1/4" X 1/4" stock is part of the kit. You are supposed to round it off and make the exhaust stacks. I would have known this right away if I had the instruction booklet. I weighed it and decided to use a piece of thin wall aluminum tubing from my stash. Also, there was an extra piece of 1/16 X 3/32"stock in the kit. It had become separated from the strip stock sheet and was in the box.
There is one thing about this kit, probably familiar to others that have built 200 series models. (I've built a lot of Guillow's kits, but this is my first 200.) A note on the plan suggest that you make strut pockets in the wing by adding strip stock to the sides of the ribs along side the notches for the struts. Strut pockets are a good Idea. However, you might want to notch the strip stock along side the strut notch since the ribs are 1/16" thick and the struts are 3/32". You probably want to deal with this before you have the covering on the wings. Personally, I don't want to sand struts to thin them down to fit. This may be one of those "six of one, half dozen of the other" situations, structurally, but I'd rather not weaken the struts where they go into the wings.
Anyway, I'll continue posting about this one. I'll just fly the Embryo in the contest Sunday. Hope to be trimming this one at the O.F.F.C. meeting next Wednesday.
I traced Former 1 onto a single piece of 1/16" sheet, cut it out and glued it into the back of the plastic nose with the nose reinforcement spacers. Since the plastic nose is meant to go over Former 1 that makes the fuselage 1/16" longer, but who's going to notice?
Then I made a simple box key using the opening that existed in Former 1. The top and bottom of the hole is curved so I simply made the top and bottom of the box to match the curves. The key is quite snug and is perfectly aligned but I'm still going to add a couple of neodymium magnets to hold it in place. I hate loose nose blocks.
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I've been building smaller, mostly indoor, models for the last couple of years. A discussion of blast tubes, on another forum, reminded me of something I was doing on other outdoor scale models, that is using Tyvek tubes. Someone came up with the Tyvek tube inside the model to provide a lubricated surface to tame longer motors, sometimes 5 times the hook to peg length and act as a built in blast tube. When I heard about this I went to the Post Office and got a Tyvek envelope. I cut out and rolled a tube for the model I was working on at the time, a small Bf-109, and it only added one gram. (See photo) It really works. I glued the seam in the tube with Original Gorilla Glue as recommended on the Dupont web site. (Well actually they described the glue generically, without calling it Gorilla glue.) I'm going to include one in the SE5.
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