Things are beginning to come together on the Scouts. I am happy with the way that the tail feathers turned out. After I glue #2 together the servos will come next. The servos on #2 will be on the inside of the fuse as designed. On #1 I did not make slots for the elevator and rudder pushrods. Thought that I could weave them through the openings between the balsa sticks. Nope. So the plan is to mount the servos on the outside of the fuselage. We’ll see how that goes.
After finishing the tail feathers on FT Simple Scout #2 I realized that #1 could use a bit more paint. But the assembly was already glued together. That means that I needed to mask off parts. Decided to paint the rudder on #1 black as a contrast to #2. Next time I will think ahead and paint BEFORE assembly. Just used plain old printer paper with some paint masking tape from the hardware.
Carmine is a subscriber to the foamboardflyers blog. He told me about some landing gear mods that he was doing to a Flite Test Simple Cub. I asked him to send me some pics, and he did. Thanks Carmine!
I learned this trick in reform school making parking signs for the warden. (Just kiddin’) Not sure if it has a name, but the idea is to make a painting mask by using the stencil punch out parts to mask the paint. For this application I needed three stencils of the same number. One is the gluing mask while the other two provide the parts to create the mask. Two sides of the vertical stab. The gluing mask prevents glue from going where you don’t want it. Remember that you are gluing the BACK of the stencil, not the front. Why number 2? I am building two FT Simple Scouts and I need to distinguish one from the other in the transmitter.
Several of the FT foam board designs use packing tape over the dihedral joint. The FT build videos show a tape dispenser that makes the process much easier than using the rolls of tape that you buy. This dispenser is weighted so you can tear a piece off with one hand. Here is a link to one that I bought on Amazon.
I made an easel from some PVC pipe. Works good for holding flat pieces like wings and control surfaces while painting. Used it to hold the wing on my FT Simple Scout while painting a scallop on the leading edge. One more thing, the FT brown foam board is water resistant, but the poster board turtle decks are not as far as I know. So it makes sense to paint them as well either with color or clear coat. Use some double sided tape to hold them to the cardboard while painting.
It could be that you want to add down thrust, right thrust, or both to a motor mount. I happen to have a 10″ disc sander that makes the job easy. Set the table for 3° down and the miter to 3° right. Sand off just enough from the front of the power pod, then glue the firewall in place. Of course you can make these measurements to suit your needs. Just recently bought a 5″ disc sander from Menards and I plan see if the smaller sander will allow me to do the same.
At a recent club event a friend was telling me about a fellow club member who was flying his model when suddenly the battery came loose and was just dangling from behind the motor. Something to avoid. My friends Bob and Ed were going flying and invited me along. My batteries were all charged but I was wondering if I have the velcro strap to keep the battery secure. Nope. So here is what I did to fix it. Had a few velcro straps from Flite Test, so I pulled out the power pod from the Old Speedster and cut a couple of holes for the strap to go through. Then replaced the power pod.
Already admitted that I am not good at free hand cutting the bevels on control surfaces. So instead I have been cutting off part of the foam board and replacing it with balsa. In this case I took a 3/16″x3/8″ strip and cut a 45° bevel on the table saw. So as shown below, the aileron is separate from the wing. Vertical and horizontal stabilizers work the same way. Then I use brown kraft tape to attach the pieces to one another for the control surface hinge.
A large foam board model with some interesting construction ideas.
