Well I can tell you today with confidence that no one was flying RC planes in the whole of New Zealand yesterday and or today. The spring winds arrived in full force creating havoc everywhere

We missed the worst of it with only 100 km winds but elsewhere in the country particularly in back farming areas and remote coastal areas top gusts where recorded at 240 kms!!

So no gardening for me and the garage although noisy. I headed back in to work on the Morane.

The point today's continued efforts was to see if I could drop some overall weight of what I had completed to date.

I have this bad habit of over building my planes, with my last two projects proving this point. Both tail draggers and tail heavy!.
I had most of the fuselage and tail feathers completed. So last night and a couple of hours today I went back through the frames to see where I could lose weight without compromising strength.
Pleased with the effort and it resulted in reasonable improvement to the weight.
Results below:

MORANE SAULNIER A1 1/3 scale

Weight loss exercise :
Fuselage 2100 now 1912 gms
9 percent loss of weight

Tail feathers 177 gms now 169 gm
4.5 percent loss of weight.

Over weight loss of 8.6 percent of fus and tail group

2277 gms down to 2081 gms

This includes the weight of two hitec Maga servos and 2 futaba 3010 servos in situ.

I still have to fine sand the fus and tail group yet so may represent more gms lost.

I estimate that 60 % of that loss is behind the CG area.

Hopefully a quieter night ,the winds are easing off.
Cheers Steve NZ

Hi fellow flyers, I can't believe it has been so long in the break from building the Morane
With work, Covid and many other interruptions ,time just got away on me.
Well I am back on to the building board, dusted off the plan and working out where I was up to with it all.
We survived Covid19, but it was not easy to run our small business and we finally give up trying, closing down for good. I guess as a number of businesses did. It has taken over a year to recover physically and mentally from it all. Now I feel stronger and ready to get back into the game.
One of the things I have been looking at is going electric with the power system. Which is interesting for me as I kind of was never keen on electric
But I have been trialing electric motors out on several of my smaller planes, coming to the conclusion that I rather like it.
I have been looking at Dualsky 6000 EP motors, suitable for 40 to 60 cc aircraft has anyone had any experience with these
Cheers Steve
I builta little balsa plane over the last couple of months to get my building hand back in

Hello there once again, another wintery day outside so I headed into the garage for a wee while. Not to cold but a nasty wind blowing with snow falling further south of here.
I completed some further work at the rear of the fuselage in order to place the tail dragger on. Not to sure about doing what is set out on the plan, so I will have a good look at the full size and try to replicate that. Otherwise all is going well.
I made a start on the belly pan area which will be removable to get at the servo and radio gear. I have decided to build the structure in place to get a good fit. I very lightly CA ed the formers in place and will build up around that.
Also I have placed a couple of photos of how I splice my 1\4 X 1\4 stringers which I took of BUSA web video s. to get longer lengths. Probably not new you guys, but it was to me.
Well thanks for your interest regards Steve

Hello again
Well a very productive afternoon in the garage today, I was able to get the tail fin and rudder completed and bend the piano wire for the rudder control as well.
Also made a couple of plywood tabs for the fin into the fuselage for extra support. I know there will be flying wires to support, but I thought it would help stiffen everything up.

Well feeling very pleased with myself, taking my time and hopefully everything will turn out good.

Hello there again,

I managed to spend a short period out in the garage this afternoon and placed a few of the stringers in place . They. seemed to fit nicely and come to the right place at the tail. Tomorrow I will start getting the tailplane dry-fitted ant worked out.
I see that the full-size version had the rudder and elevator control horns internal the fuselage, which I think I could replicate ok.
I spent some time surfing the net looking for the correct colours for the French roundels and came across the information about the origin of the French roundels and that it was the practice of a good number of emerging WW1 airforces to use the circle to place their emblem into. The French it appears looked back to the past to make use of the colours of the tricolored cockade red, white and blue. Of the 1789 period of the French revolution. Well, I hope that this is reasonably correct. I found it interesting to read.
The next bit of research will be to find out the correct colours of the 5 colour camouflage scheme used on the Morane Saulnier A1

Hi, sorry I just realized I actually haven't put a picture up of what I am building.
It is a Morane Saulnier WW1 aircraft 1/3 rd scale. The plans are from BUSA
I am yet to decide on which aircraft to model or base my paintwork on as there are several really nice schemes out there to choose from.
I hope it ok to post these pictures as I retrieved them from the internet

Hello there again
Well I have managed to get out to the garage for a couple of hours today I took a small fan heater as a comrade to in an attempt to keep me warm. Didn't work, it was still cold.
So I will put up a few pictures of my efforts. I wanted to show you the small saw bench I purchased from AliExpress this year. It has really improved my cuts and keep the cross cut square in both ways. Across and downwards.

I also purchased a very small engineer s square which is proving very handy in my effort to maintain a good finish to my work. The little saw bench can easy handle up to 1\2 inch balsa wood with ease and if you go quietly it will rip the 1\2 inch as well. It can manage thin ply ok but does not like 1\4 inch at all.
I started the tail plane and elevator in this session and set out where my Robart hinges are to go . I drilled the holes and made small notches to get a closer fit.
I think this has worked out good doing this part early in the build.

Hello again
Well again I find myself doing other things instead of working on the Morane.
Bitterly cold over the last 3 weeks with the temperature remaining cool.
We are waiting on our new log fire to be installed so doing it about hard.
Today I decided to recover an old hobby king trainer I have had for years.
It had a horrid pink film on it so time for that to go
The bones of it are still good. But very faded and the control horns I discovered during the striping down were in fact very brittle and broke as I was removing them which was disconcerting. I last flew it about 6 months ago I think so I count myself lucky not to have had a crash.
So this afternoon I pulled most of the old film off and recovered with some red film I have about. The wing is in good condition and I will place a servo in each side instead of the one central servo.
Oh well at least I feel that I have done something constructive ,not scale but something to quickly do.

Hello there
Well not much building this week, cold , frosty and busy at work.
My son has liberated our second vehicle for several weeks so having to walk to work in the 0530hrs frosts. What is worse is our other vehicle is too small to get a plane in.
The Morane Saulnier plans are not or don't appear to have all the details, so a bit of detective work is needed. It pretty much admitts to that the the manual from BUSA, That's ok I have time on my side.

Although there is a term that I am of sure about if you can help me with that "BHD" it is in relation to the formers .
I will attach photos.
Another thing that has been somewhat confusing,but I followed the instructions was the placement of a former at the back of the cockpit area which required me the leave a gap between one former and another?
I can't see why it is need, but I am sure all will be revealed in the fullness of time.

Hi again, well not much more completed this weekend, a bit of a disaster really, my son arrived with his lovely french girl for the weekend which was very nice. But my son had a project in mind to complete and as the weather was not that flash or warm ,he decided to build his cabinet in the garage.
It turned out to be a very dusty affair, pretty much covering everything in a coat of dust!
So I have spent the last few days cleaning and getting everything back to square one againl
About correctly mounting servos
.
I looked up about how to use the servo eyelets properly, I remembered reading a while ago that the eyelets go to the bottom of the servo. I have done this no, it does seem to make a difference, they feel more secure now
Is this correct?
What are your thoughts on this ? Any comments would be welcome.

I added extra support to my servo rails by placing and gluing some small plywood supports over the top of the rails. A bit of added security.

.

Hello there, I haven't got much completed over the last few days. The weather has turned really cold, we have had several big frosty mornings in row and by the time I get home from work there is only about an hour's light left and the temperature drops really quickly , making it to cold to be out in the workshop.

I positioned my large Hi-Tec servos where I felt they should go.which ended up being further back then I wanted. The plans don't give any clues as to where they should go,but still should be just ahead of the CG.

I am planning on a pull pull system for the rudder and elevator at this stage.
Also planning on doing a bit of scale detail in the cockpit, so have been thinking about overall accessibility to make sure I can get to the servo positions if needed once the plane is completed.

Hi there
I thought I would add a few pictures of the fuselage progress for the 1\3 rd scale Morane Saulnier.
I have spent abit of time working out the engine position and servo position s for the throttle and choke on the Moraine Saulnier the fuselage progress to date seems to be going along nicely. When I started to look at this model ,there seemed to be limited construction pictures online. Maybe I was looking in the wrong places.
As I mentioned earlier this is my first adventure into gas engines so lots to find out about them..
Anyway just wanted to say hello again.

Hi there, just wanting to introduce my self today, I am pleased to have found this web site, I have found lots of interesting topics and ideas.
I love reading all the tips and great ideas on offer and have made use of some of them. I have always flown with glow engine and now I have started my first gas engine product, A Balsa USA Morane Saulnier 1/3rd scale.

I have built the 1/4 scale Fokker DVII from scratch, it is yet to fly. Very busy at work at present so it will have to wait.

I will pop a picture on today for you to see, I have tried to give it some weathering effect to give that a go.