Since we can't split the molds till Wed. (I like to give them a full 3 days to fully cure) I had to find something to do....

So, the outer wing panels, elevons and flaps were all primed for the last time. Gotta hit these with some 320 grit sandpaper and then i'll start spraying colors..



I also went ahead and trimmed all the flanges on the molds (where I could get to, IE not around the wing tubes). I also drilled the holes for the holding bolts around the inlet lip flanges and bolted those together.



Tomorrow i'll probably sand the outer panels and maybe spray the bottom wing panel with color.. The top side camo i'm still debating on how to paint..

Yea do something .. paint those wings.

I had plans to paint when I got home.. but I forgot i needed to do some flite-metal panels and the wingtips....

So, made the flite-metal panels for the top and bottom outer wing panels:



Then sanded the wing panels with some 320 grit, and pulled all the seam line tape:



Then I installed all the flite-metal panels... something i didn't realize until recently, apparently the wing tips and the curved portion of the wings were metal on the full size.. sooo they got flite-metal'd as well. After the thing flies, i'll cut out the nav lights and make up some lenses and install the light:



Then I made dinner....

Then came back out and sprayed the RLM-76 color on the bottom of the wing panels, elevons, servo hatch's and the flaps... I've said it before and I will say it again.... I LOVE WARBIRD COLORS! Everything i painted tonight took THREE OUNCES! of paint. I have never had such a light color cover so well with so little paint, unless it was WBC. This stuff is awesome! I bought a quart of the RLm76 and i'm not even half way through it yet and this is the 2nd airplane i've painted.. and on the first plane, i mixed up 8-10ounces of paint and never sprayed 3/4 of it!



And in this photo you can just Barely make out the seam lines:




Tomorrow we split the mold and I'll start spraying the color on the top of everything but the flaps.. As these still need their TE trimmed to the final curve.

There really is no "scheme's" to choose from for this thing since it was still in the R&D stage.. so the wonderful Flight-sim crowd has come up with some cool ones.. The one i'm going to sort of replicate, is a winter camo scheme.. what I mean by sort of, is i'm going to use the late war summer Camo colors (like whats on my FW-190) and over-spray them with a white wash and wear the white-wash to give a scheme that looks similar (but different) to this:

[image]http://www.skyunlimited.net/gotha_images_fsx/gotha_fsx_2.jpg[/image]

Thomas

Really enjoying seeing your progress it is a very professional job. Cannot wait to see the mould pulled off. I echo your comments about Warbird paint. I always use it for WW2 aircraft. I had not done much spraying before and found that it was simple to use being water soluble. Also the great thing to remember is how poor the standard of painting was especially near to the end of the war, also there were ofter patches where new parts were let in. Have a look at the winter schemes rapidly painted on aircraft in Russia.

John

DISASTER!!!!!!!!!!!













JUST KIDDING! [][]

Here ya go...

bottom:


Inlet lips:


Top:



Looking in the inlet with the halves bolted back together:



The plug came out 99% perfect. There are only 2 little places about 1/4" long each where the inlet block-off plates are that where damaged (body filler chipped out). Otherwise, the plug is exactly like how it was before it was molded, which is great, cause now I can use it as a paint test piece lol

After the mold was split, we test fit the master templates. Granted no composite skin is layed up yet, but it told us the templates are pretty dang close to being perfect. Just a little fine tuning to do to them, and then we need do all the lightning holes, etc and they are done. But we can't do this till the skins are layed up and.

Carry through spars. These are 3/16" aircraft ply, and will have another 3/16" doubler around the tube tube sockets. The sockets will also be epoxied and glassed to these spars.


Here is a shot of the landing gear plate support structure. Again, all 3/16" aircraft ply. The Landing gear plate will be 3/16" ply as well and will probably have a layer of glass or carbon on one side. These parts will all be interlocking so they key together and the plate will slot into the ribs. This entire structure will also be over a carbon re-inforcement panel in the composite skins.



And then we sprayed some green paint on the top of the wings.. only 3oz used for both wing panels and elevons.. still need to paint the top of the flaps:



This Friday/Saturday I'm going to try and mold the canopy frame, main gear doors and the vacuum form canopy plug..

And if your curious how heavy the outer wing panels are:

Great work Thomas, the mould looks really good. I used a lot of heavy ply (3mm and 6mm birch ply) in the landing gear areas of my Horten but the rest was mainly poplar with carbon reinforcement as you can see from the photos I sent you. Amazing how the weight builds up. I ended up at 18Kg but the structure was strong enough to survive some early landing gear problems. You will find you need plenty of nose weight. I wonder if you could consider making some honeycomb formers to save weight. Anyway you will know as soon as you get the first one finished and have a final weight. The guy that made the main parts of the Boulton Paul P111 that I have made the mould much like yours but made the formers of carbon faced balsa (both sides) which was surprisingly strong.

Enjoying this one!

John

Thanks john!

I have thought of doing a carbon/balsa/carbon/balsa/carbon sandwhich for the main spars to about a 1/2" thickness. The carbon could be oriented to give a ton of torsional strength, but would add another $200-300 to the price and not be significantly lighter to make it worth while. I think once we get the lightning hole layout figured out, the ply bulkheads will be significantly lighter. I may still put a layer of glass on the bias for a bit of extra torsional strength though.

Man its lookin real good...a ton of work just to get here....I dont think you will need to worry about weight..withthe size and construction you are working with the plane will be a floater for sure...you going to have to work just to get it to land

That is the truth! At 20lbs this thing will be a floater for sure. There is even talk that if it performs well on 6s, i may put a 6s 10,000mah lipo in it just for the extra weight. 15minute flight times should be possible to, or atleast close to it

Looks great Invert and thtaco! That is the perfect motivation to move right along to phase 2 of this project!

Originally Posted by pdawg

Looks great Invert and thtaco! That is the perfect motivation to move right along to phase 2 of this project!

Yes it is! If only someone wasnt going out of town this weekend... Haha.

Yea I know I suck. Hopefully I will be able to get some work done on my wings over the Cristmas weekend.

Wings panels are 4.2lbs right now minus 3 servo's and a bunch of extension wire. So i suspect each wing panel will be about 5lbs when completed..

I applied the RLM-82 color on top of the 81 green from yesterday. I also waxed and buffed the plug around the canopy frame and the main gear doors in prep for making those molds tomorrow and Saturday:

very nice.