Hey guys,

After a long hiatus I'm back onto the hawk! The customer build I had been doing is going tomorrow so I can get back onto my hawk now.

The wing is pretty much done so its straight onto the fuse. I'm starting on the back end and working forwards, so the elevators are the first port of call. I bent up some new 3mm steel rods as the kit supplied ones are too short. I then cut slots for the rods in the stabs so they face forwards rather that backwards because in order to mass balance the stabs you need as much weight forward as you can get.

I also cutout some 3mm balsa fillers to fill the grove but more importantly spread the elevator loads so we don't end up with an in flight failure as we have already seen happen in this thread. All this has been epoxied in and sanded smooth. I have also added some lead to just behind the L/E of the stab to start the mass balancing process. I will glass them first before finishing the balance.

Lastly is the joiner I have machined up to see if its going to work.....

Thanks

Dave

ticketec


looks a lot like what I did in post #45 , but I like you made yours smaller

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showp...8&postcount=45

Originally Posted by pulsery2k1

ticketec


looks a lot like what I did in post #45 , but I like you made yours smaller

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showp...8&postcount=45

Yep Your was the best solution I've seen so far. The only thing different is that i'm going to try and have the linkages in the base of the fin and not the exhaust. At first I thought it would bind up with all the angles that the elevators have but it seem ok for the fairly limited travel you need. it was very smooth with the 2" total travel required as per the instructions.

I have just started glassing the tail feathers and will run in some wiring into the rear fuse halves.

I also have the CS12 90mm fan and the new "heavier" blades here now so I can start assembling that and look at getting it all balanced up.

I have set myself the target of having this model all finished up in under 2 months so its ready for Jet's over the Fraser coast. going to have to put some hard yards in over the next few weeks because if I complete the fuse to the same standard as the wings, there plenty of work left!!!

Thanks

dave

While doing so more research on the hawk I have just discovered that they way I am doing my elevator setup is almost exactly the same as Jepe's fast foam modifications have you do it! so that meas it's achieveable and it works!

I have have glassed the top side of the stabs, but I have also read of more and more stab failures on these hawks so I will add an extra layer of glass around the pivot point on the underside to hopefully stop that from happening on mine.

I started trial fitting the CS12 fan because I know this is going to be an area that will cause some problems. the CS fan is about 40% longer than the flyfly or wemo housings but I think that wont represent too many problems. So other than to sand down the "retaining" ring of foam from the seat that should be pretty good to go for now.

Next I started sanding the intake trunks and filled in the flyfly brand stamp hole with a bit of depron, lightweight spack filled and sanded smooth and also remove all the mold release bumps that are all over the intakes. Another mod that Jepe does to his hawks is an intake mod which should reduce the drag cased by the excessivily large intakes and intake trunk, and i've decided to incorporate that one mine too with a slight twist. More on that one later.

The last pic show the start of the wiring looms going in. The yellow one is for all the lighting, as I will put a full setup of strobes etc on this one, and the black loom is the servos lines. in this case 2 extensions for the elevator and rudder servos.

Thanks

dave

I have now completed the mod's to the intakes.

What I did to maintain roughly the same area was to use the wing saddle as a guide to the curve i needed. I drew this onto a template and then this would become the guide for the upper section of the duct. I decided to keep her all foam so intead of makeing the new intake trunks with balsa, I used some 6mm depron I had on hand.

Firstly I had to joint the front section of the fuse to it's rear section. 5min expoy did the trick here. I then used my new template and marked the wing saddle area with the tempate + 6mm for the thickness of the depron. This allowed me to use the wing saddle as one side of the intake trunk and then the template gave the upper side it's correct shape. by trial and error on a test piece I worked out the shape of the new side wall of the intake truck and then it was all CA'd into place. A little light weight spack filler was used to smooth out the corners.

It looks a whole heap better now, and I hope it will be a benefit when it comes to flying! I have a little more sanding to do tomorrow where the two new inside walls meet and then I have to start on the exhaust ducting and have that put into place so that it doesn't hold up the joining of the fuse as there isn't too much left to go before I get there now! If i can get her to the point where it's ready to glass by this weekend I'll be chuffed

Thanks

dave

the recess I cut into the intake to fair in the 6mm depron, and the before and after pictures of the standard intake trunk, and the new intake truck with the depron sidewall.
Thanks

dave

Been busy with work but finally got round to picking up the bits that where holding me up. Some 12 gauge wire and some laminating film. I've had trouble finding Mylar, so what I have used in the past is laminating flin that has been put through the machine with nothing in it. Almost exactly the same properties as the stock flyfly material supplied.

So after a good session fluffing about with the tube it's pretty much done

Thanks

Dave

I have started getting the fan ready and I thought a compromise would be best option so I have cut down the fan and opened up the fan access hole in the fuse.

The wiring is now all pretty much complete, so I'm happy that it's ready to glue the two fuse halve's together. Job for tomorrow.....

thanks

dave

I know I'm a couple of weeks late, but Congrats Nick !
You gonna resume your build now?

After a few days doing other things which finnaly included heading out to the model field for a fly with my flying buddy, I have progressed some more on the hawk.

The stabs have been glassed, and i added an additional "triangle" of slightly heavier grade of glass to the root area of the stab and then glassed the whole lower surface with 1/2oz cloth. the fin was also glassed and set aside to dry.

I then made the call finally to glue the two fuse halves together! it went together pretty good but as you can see from the pic's, the joint of the duct did have a little area that was playing hard to get. so I squeezed my paw into the intake and CA'd it together. All good now, and since these pictures were taken I have started spackling the joints inside the duct making this model the most effort I have ever put into my intakes period!

The outside joint have been also been lightweight spacked, and waiting to dry so I can sand them down and progress to the next step, which is arguably the most important on this model and that is the nose modification. The project is gathering momentum and I can see the light at the end of the tunnelwhic is a great feeling.

Thanks

Dave

Today I started work on the Hawk by thinning down the exhaust area a bit. seeing as I am glassing the model there is no need to leave it so chunky.

Then it began.................. I chopped the nose off! I used my hot wire cutter to chop it clean off. I then also parted off the heavily "slanted" section of the nose so that I could reuse part of the original nose in the rebuild. I stole this Idea of another bloke who did this and it seemed to work well I then traced around the chopped up sections to make up prefectly matching templates out of 0.5mm aluminium (because that's what I had lying around and it was quick) with the tin snips.

The calculations as to how big a filler block was done using the drawings and the 1/48 scale model I am half way through building and I arrived at a block size of about 140mm. The same as the guys who's idea was so the calc's seemed to have lined up nicely. Using a bit od double sided tape I positioned the templates onto the foam and then cut around them to end up with a block that fit's perfectly onto the exsisting fuse cuts. I then modified the templates to include a retract cutout and I'll sort out most of the retract fitment and mounts before I attach the nose on.

Good progress for one nights work.

Thanks

dave

I started work on the nose gear by first attaching the wing to the fuse and seeing where the nose gear would end up and how tall it needed to be. I then cut out a 3mm ply retract mount and began reamoving foam to let it into the fuse. As you can see in the pic's I made sure that the plate extended into the original fuse as well as the new nose section. This has two purposes. the first and most important is to spead the landing gear loads on both the new and old section therefore not relying soley on the shear loading of the glue joint between new and old sections of fuse, and secondly It act's as a locating dowl when it come time to join the two sections together.

I have also cut out some backing plates that will give me more meat to screw the retracts into.

I now have to whip up some more templates to make the slot in the new leg deeper to accomodate the nose oleo, and wheel. once done, I plan to make a lightening hole through the new section and this will also double for access to the nose if i ever needed to run wires etc.

Thanks

dave

The new nose section is now glued on. I added a little foam triangle to spread a bit more load.

Just waiting for my hawk mk127 specialist to come round and green light the nose before I glue on the final section. Nose gear work in the mean time.

Thanks

Dave

Looks the goods ticketec.

Are you going to square up the front like the real thing?

Hey mate,

Yep sure plan too. Just got chop the tip off and glue on a block that will give some meat to work with. Just need to make sure the final length is all good first. Hopefully get together 'ole mate this weekend.

How is your going?

Thanks

Dave