Well yesterday’s work was not as progressive as I hoped. After a long crappy day at work a friend took me dinner and I was so full I had a hard time getting motivated but managed to get some key things completed.  It also took my mind off the crappy day!

The first was to finalize the exhaust can installation. After some trimming I was able to fit the custom made aluminum mount from Pro Flow. One of my favorite advantages of giant scale is the room you have to work with. There are few tight areas I can’t get my hands in.  It turns out I will need to get some extensions for the exhaust ends if I don’t want oil build up in the exhaust tunnel as you can see in the pictures. I also need to clean up around the exhaust openings I had to cut out for ventilation to keep the tunnel cool and help air flow out from the cowling. See pictures.

Next I did some modifications on the top of the engine box. This is where I will mount the ignition module and after reading some reports of this area weakening on other planes I came up with what I think will be a stronger solution.  It took some precision cutting and fitting but it came out clean looking and much stronger.

While the glue was drying I unpackaged 4 servos and the new Quad Current Meter from Fromeco. The meter will help synchronize the multi servos in the wings and rudder from binding and fighting each other. Too much binding we all know will drain the batteries rapidly.  After installing the servos in the wings I played with the meter a little. I can’t imagine setting up multi servos with any radio less than what I have (Futaba 14mz). There is a great deal of necessary programming to get this to work correctly and the 14mz really helps simplify it for dummies like me. 

I am waiting for some hardware on order for the throttle linkage and custom rudder set up and until those arrive I can’t do much with those two areas.  Soooo tomorrow I will put on the cowling, wings and everything else to get a trail run on the CG.  Once I have a good idea on the balance I can start mounting batteries and radio equipment.  Eventually the plane will be a little tail heavy for my style flying but for initial test flights she will be dead on or slightly nose heavy.

I had originally thought the build might take a couple weeks but standing back looking at it last night and what I still need to do I thinks it’s more like 3-4 weeks.  It is possible to assemble this plane in 10 hours’ time but I like to keep things detailed and often take long term flying abuse into consideration so custom modifications add build time and thought process time.  You may be stuck reading these blogs for two more weeks.

Thanks for reading and if you have a tip let me know or even just want to comment on my ridicules blog.