Covering with Polyspan

[dephela]

Greetings,
Building an F1A plane and it came with polyspan for the wings/stab.

I've never used the stuff before, what's best method for attaching and shrinking? I guess it gets doped like any tissue covering.

Dennis

[competitior]

Covering with polyspan is a little different from covering with light weight silkspan. The biggest single thing is that it is unaffected by water since its all poylester plastic material.
There are some decent basic instructions for this material on the web site at "ModelResearchLabs.com" (I can't seem to find the underline).
Note that in place of water srinking it, you can use a heat gun or sealing iron. It will not go around compound cuves with out a lot of work, use many small pieces instead.
Apply it with clear dope just like silkspan, be careful not to use too much clear dope on the finished model as this stuff is strong and can destroy any model frame work. Best to use Randoph's clear dope and only 2-3 thin coats of that until you know what you are doing.
Polyspan has been around for at least 21 years and is the material of choice for most contest modelers

You will never go back to any other covering material....

Curt Stevens:cool:

[dephela]

The wings are covered.
Polyspan is a GREAT covering!
I used Sig's "Stix-it" to hold it to the frame. I just tacked it down all around then sealed the edges. Even the highly undercambered bottom side stuck in an instant. This product also worked very well on the 1/2 mil mylar I used for the stab.

Shrinking/tighening the polyspan was a snap! As soon as I was done ironing the edges, I waved the "magic wand" over the open areas and it all worked out, no wrinkles at all. The slight curvature of the tips worked out with only a few small wrinkles which sanded out nicely.

3 coats of thinned Sig nitrate dope look to have it all sealed.

It's a beautiful finish to a wing!