That's a really cool idea with the timelapse, and a clever way of triggering the camera. I'll be following this.

Got more done on the fuselage this weekend.

Once the bulkheads were in place, the fuselage lower sides get glued in place and clamped.



An important tip here, is when gluing something big like this, I not only dry fit it but also clamp it all up before adding any glue. This way you can figure out where you need pressure to get a close glue joint, and all your clamps are ready to go and within arms reach. There's nothing worse that trying to hold a part in place while also realizing that that clamp you need is JUST out of reach. If you watch the timelapse below carefully you can see the fuse get clamped up, and then disassembled so the glue can go on.

So the pictures above and below actually are without glue.



There's also some panels that go on at the aft end of the fueslage.





...

...

Next the 3/8" balsa fueslage stringers go in.



The manual calls for these stringers to be "notched" by 1/8" so that when you put the 1/8" play tailwheel mounting plate in place, it sits flat with the stringer.



I made these notches before installing the stringers, with by far the most useful tool I own - my Balsa Stripper:



If you don't have one, get one. It means never buying another balsa stick - You can make anything you need from balsa sheets.
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...
Last thing was glueing on the fuselage bottom. This got clamped and weighted while the glue set.



This caused my first minor "oopsie" of the build. I assumed when clamping the fuse bottom that the fuse sides should be drawn in flush with the bottom (See the picture above) the clamp at the front of the fuse.

However, when I looked at it, this makes the front of the fuselage into a trapezoid shape which doesn't fit into the firewall (the firewall has cutouts that are all perfectly perpendicular:



If you look closely at the manual the picture shows that the front fuse corners don't actually meet... you need to be looking very close:



Luckily I noticed this mistake early enough that the glue hadn't completely set and I managed to separate the fuse sides at the front of the fuse and reglue them at the correct position. Normally I'd gloss over this point, but I figured I'd include it in the build log as a lesson and reminder me to:
-RTFM*2.
-Read ahead in the manual then go read the manual again.
-Once everything is clamped and drying, do another sanity check before the glue has dried.

Last up, here's the timelapse of this weekend's work.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IPEsH35WBD8

Tom

Nice work, this is a nice looking plane. What are you planning for power?

Originally Posted by terryscustom

Nice work, this is a nice looking plane. What are you planning for power?

I'll be using the DA-100 that currently resides in my 35% Dalton 260. I also hope to work some canisters into the fuselage (the kit currently is designed for a stock muffler installation)

Tom

Not a huge amount to report this week.

I did some of everyone's favourite job... balsa trusswork in the aft fuselage.



I also put in some lower formers and some balsa stringers:



The fuselage is now taller than I am.




Most of this week was spent figuring out what sort of canister I need to fit into the fuselage. I finally settled on the narrow MTW75 canisters with 50mm drop headers. I wanted to settle on the canister before I glued up the front of the fuselage. The kit is designed for stock muffers, and it's much easier to make the necessary modifications BEFORE glue-ing.

Anyways, After finding some used canisters on flying giants and ordering the headers from DA, I decided to move on to building the rudder to delay sealing up the fuselage until the mufflers arrive.

The rudder is built over plans and made mostly out of 1/2" balsa sticks with a few laser cut parts near the bottom.

It was kinda fun to break out the cork board and use some T-pins for a change.



Tom

Here's this weeks video update.

Starts with pulling the DA-100 off the Dalton so I can do some engine and header fitting.

Once I realize that my stubby MTW75k's won't really fit well, I pulled the long skinny MTW75 out of my 50cc aircraft to check the fit. I think that if I get 50mm drop headers the MTW75 should be able to fit above the landing gear plate area.

I found some used cans on FlyingGiants and ordered the headers from DA. While I wait for them to arrive, I switched to building the fin and rudder instead.

Enjoy:

http://youtu.be/Z01Zd42JUlc



Tom

Now that the fin is done, I had to throw it on the fuse to get an idea of the final size of this puppy.







Tom

Hi Tom
I recently started looking for a kit plane to build.
Well, after TOO MANY ARF`s I feel like building something from scratch again!
AMR kit`s seem to be of great quality and fun to build.
I am very tempted to order this kit as well.
I will follow your progress with lots of interest and excitement!
Thanks for all your work!
I saw the idea of the cam at a friends building log a few month ago.
It is amazing to see a model beeing built in just a few minutes.
I hope at the end you will put everything together into "the making of"!?!

If I order this kit I promise to become an active part of this thread!!!

Looking forward to your updates!

Kind Regards

Martin from Dubai

Got one horizontal stabilizer done up and drying on the building board.



The interesting part of building the stabilizer is the rounded bow you get to make by laminating balsa.

The kit comes with a plywood form for making the bow. This is one of the many jigs I was mentioning in an earlier post:



First I put the balsa strips in the bathtub and left them there for the day while I was at work.



Next I use a combination of clamps and pins to pin the strips around the form.


...

After the strips had dried a for a couple of hours on the form, I removed them, added glue and reclamped them. One tip - Use a polyurethane glue like gorilla glue for this, not carpenters glue. The first bow I made I used carpenters glue and the dampness in the wood prevented the carpenter glue from drying properly. The second one where I used gorilla glue turned out perfectly.

The gorilla glue will bubble and seep out everywhere. Make sure you have a layer of wax paper between the plywood forming jig and your balsa laminations.





The seepage is really easy to pick off with finger nails, and then the whole bow gets sanded down to the level of the jig.

What you end up with is a really tough, smooth curved piece.






Tom

Where is the beer? Everything else looks great !

Here ya go..

Been drinking a batch of homebrew while building this week. The keg is almost empty at the moment though.









Full Disclosure, these are some older pictures, but my current batch of homebrew is roughly the same colour.

Tom

^ My HERO !!! ^