n00bs Gonna Build a Carden

[gareth.ky]

Shots of the evenings work:

[gareth.ky]

This information was most helpful. Apparently the Auto Air base will bind to fiberglass, Lexan and Carbon fiber just find without a primer. So all this primer nonsense has been somewhat wasted time.

The primer did help me fill all the pinholes and fix all the problems with the wheel pants. Better prep would have made it unnecessary. I'll sand the parts till they are smooth, if I sand through to the fiberglass its not a problem. On with the base coat tomorrow.

[gareth.ky]

Got all parts but the canopy painted with the White Auto Air base coat. There is a lot of upside to these paints, non toxic, available in small quantities, cheap, cleanup with water and easy to spray. I'm drying the paint with my covering heat gun. That way turn around time between coats in just a couple of minutes. A single 4oz bottle nearly covered the all of the parts. Colors are going to take fewer coats and less paint.

The first two coats are very light coats. I don't know if you have ever seen the back of a ceramic glazed sink or tub but that what the first coat looks like. Here what it looks like after the first coat:

The third coat is a "medium" filler coat to achieve full coverage. Don't touch the parts until you know they are dry. The paint will go from shiny to dull and hazy when dry. It's subtle but can be seen under florescent light.

The major downside of this paint system for us is that often we want to color match the parts we are painting to the covering. You can't get AutoAir color matched, you have to do it yourself by hand. I'm taking the approach of buying a few colors close to the color I want and mixing them. I start in small drop sized quantities mixed with my finger on some white card. Once I get an idea of the ratio I mix up a larger batch and try to err on the light side of the final color. Then i can tweak it by adding more of the darker color as needed.

I'm trying to match Monokote Yellow using Auto air Lemon Yellow and Sun Gold Yellow. A mix of about 3:1 seemed to work out nicely. I shot the wheel pants as a test. I think its a little light but I wont know until I can see it in the daylight tomorrow:

It took just 2 coats to achieve coverage over the white base coat so less paint is required for color coats than the base coat.

[buttface]

When you gona take it out and crash it?

[gareth.ky]

Soon, before the St Louis Huckfest. I'm gonna try and get the yellow on all the parts and then the blue on the hatch. I'll have to put down an inter coat clear to tape the lines for the rest of the design so that's a good place to stop painting until after St. Louis. Once the paint is on the hatch and its cleared then the airplane is an ARF.

[gareth.ky]

I'm running around like a crazy person to get this thing in the air for the Huckfest. It wont be "Dun" but it will be airworthy. Looking at Wednesday for a Maiden flight.

Dan's advice, and its good advice, was to just do all the things I knew how to do first. I wanted to wrap up the Yellow paint and get some clear coat over it so it didn't get messed up on the trip. I tweaked the yellow some more and it looks pretty good now. One problem, turns out the top and bottom of the cowl are different colors! Oh well. The clear coat is easy to spray, just turn the pressure down to 25 and turn up the paint flow as high as it will go.

I got the Hatch smoothed out with Bondo:

Switches are installed (Thanks again Andy!) and battery packs have been built. They are Johnny Chimpo brand cells, I just need some stickers

Covered the front of the hatch. Elevators are hinged and so is the rudder, or it will be before I fall asleep.

Oh yea, "When We Left Earth" on Discovery is good build motivation.

[gareth.ky]

So the last two weeks haven't seen much work get done. I went to the Huckfest without the airplane and then may parents were visiting so it was family time. They were nice enough to grab a pic of me holding up the tail though!

Not much left to go:

• Hinge both ailerons
• tail wheel springs
• mount ignition
• fuel system
• servo extensions and random soldering
• program the radio
• double check everything and add the loctite

[FlyguyXII]

looks good!!! Whats the weight as of right now?

[The Dirt Doctor]

What sort of paint gun are you using?

TDD aka Bobby

[TrojanMan]

Nice photochop job! I don't believe it really exists!

	Quote: Originally Posted by gareth.ky
	So the last two weeks haven't seen much work get done. I went to the Huckfest without the airplane and then may parents were visiting so it was family time. They were nice enough to grab a pic of me holding up the tail though! Not much left to go: Hinge both ailerons tail wheel springs mount ignition fuel system servo extensions and random soldering program the radio double check everything and add the loctite

[gareth.ky]

Weight is currently at 25.06 pounds. That's everything but the fuel. With every last bolt and Velcro strap in the airplane its probably a couple more ounces than that. I weighed it in parts, fuse was balances on a box to get the weight accurately. Here is a breakdown:

Fuse: 15lb 14.3oz
Cowl: 1lb 7.5oz
Spinner, Prop & Ignition: 1lb 7.1oz
Left wing: 2lb 2.9oz
Right wing: 2lb 1.9oz
Left stab : 11.5oz
Right stab 11.1oz
Aluminum wing tube: 8.8oz

CG is very close to the mark. Its somewhere forward of the wing tube but aft of the tube socket support forward edge, which is the CG mark on the plans.

The spray gun is the Porter Cable model mentioned in DSP Dave's thread, it is a traditional non HVLP gun. It seems to work OK. I have seen some cheap HVLP gun and blower combos that might be better suited to the task. Like this one that cost roughly what my compressor cost. Its stores in a smaller space and makes less noise. As always there is more than one way to do it.

Yes TrojanMan, is all a hoax. You can look for it in the mirage at The Heatwave!

[TrojanMan]

	Quote: Originally Posted by gareth.ky
	Yes TrojanMan, is all a hoax. You can look for it in the mirage at The Heatwave!

I look forward to seeing it all together and in the air! Way to go Gareth!

Jim