Siloam Springs RC Modelers

Some of you who were at the club meeting back in August remember the built-up fuselage for the Black Magic I was building. The fuselage was nearly done at that point, but I don’t think I’d fiberglassed it yet. I covered it with 0.7 ounce fiberglass cloth and finishing resin. There’s a trick to laying down very little resin, since it weighs a lot, but you need enough to fill in the weave of the fiberglass to get a smooth finish. The trick is to first seal the balsa sheeting with Coverite’s Balsarite, then use a foam roller to put a thin layer of resin on the wood. Then you lay down the fiberglass cloth and smooth it out. You can then use the foam roller again to soak up excess resin, squeezing the resin out of the roller with paper towels. Once the fiberglass cloth has a good coat of resin (but not too much!), you apply microballoons with your hands, rubbing it into the resin. That works to fill the weave of the cloth and soak up any excess resin. It was a good trick, because the fueslage came out really smooth, and I added less than 2 ounces! It needed very little primer to smooth it out nicely, and the primer only added another ounce.
I went down to Van Buren on Saturday (01/16) to help Mike paint the fuselage. I say I went down to help: I mostly stood around in amazement at the work Mike was doing. He worked from 9am until 6pm on that plane. It was really interesting all the steps he went through to lay down a color, mask off other areas, lay down another color, etc. It was impressive to see it slowly come together into the pattern I’d drawn. I got down there at 11am, and I had to leave at 2pm. I got a bunch of pictures, and I left my camera, so Mike could get more after I’d left.

Here is a picture of the canopy and the chin cowl (click on the picture for a larger version):

Here is a picture of the fuselage (click on the picture for a larger version):

Here is a picture of the rudder (click on the picture for a larger version):

It really turned out great! Mike said he’s got color sanding and polishing still to do. I shold get it back in a week or so. After that, I’ve got a good 2-3 weeks of re-assembly to do before it’s ready to fly. Just in time for the weather to turn off nice

I got the wings and horizontal stabs covered over the Christmas break. Here is a picture of the tops of the wings and horizontal stabs (click on the picture for a larger version):

Here is a picture of the bottoms of the wings and horizontal stabs (click on the picture for a larger version):

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