It's a lot of work, but the checkerboard looks great !

I finished the wing bottom today. Doing the Checker Board before the top of the wing was covered is not the way I like to do things, but the wing is straight and without warps, so hopefully I can keep it that way. My Light Gray Ultracoat came in so I am ready to start the wing top. Doing Checker Board is time consuming, I had about a week in that project. Here's a picture, and I can see so many flaws, but it should look good at a distance. John

checkerd looks great!!! 100 ' up in the air no one will see anything wrong!
sP

Originally Posted by jbrooks01

. Doing Checker Board is time consuming, I had about a week in that project. Here's a picture, and I can see so many flaws, but it should look good at a distance. John

Thats the thing about building airplanes. You know every little flaw or mistake. But someone that doesn't know about them might have to study for a while to find them. Looks like a keeper to me
Fred

Thanks for the kind words. Not much to post today, but I did get the base covering on half of the wing top. John

The wing top is done. The Gray is Ultracoat and the Blue is Monocoat. The Ultracoat is so much easier to use than Monocoat, the wing tips were no effort at all. I used Crowfly's method for the curved pieces I added to the Blue, but I still managed to get a bubble in one of the pieces. I ran some Red stripes between the blue and gray and called it done. John

Very classy color scheme. Love the checkerboard as well.

The wing is finished and R T F. I installed the servos, control horns, CA'd the hinges, and ran the control rods. I hooked up an AR 600, adjusted the ailerons even with the wing center line, and set the control throws at 5/8" up and down (instructions call for 1/2"). If the throws are too twitchy I will adjust them with the radio. AUW of the wing with servos etc is 16 1/2 oz. I can set the wing aside and start covering the fuselage. John

Just a quick post today. There were two thin plastic strips in the box, so I glued them to the wing saddle with C A (that seemed as good a place as any for them). I like to make sure the antenna for the AR 600 receivers gets good reception so I usually route the long antenna outside the airplane. I found a good place out of the way to mount the receiver, coated the balsa with thin C A (the Velcro doesn't want to stick to bare wood), and mounted the receiver with Velcro. I routed some Shrink Tube to come out of the bottom of the fuselage aft of the wing and attached it with C A. I'm running out of excuses not start covering, so I may as well bite the bullet and fire up the iron. John

I got some covering done today, the bottom of the fuselage and the bottom of the horizontal stabilizer. Just a little bit each day is all that I can handle, otherwise the quality suffers. John

Nice job. I had a Smoothie back in the early 90's. great flying plane. This was back in my slimmer days. I powered it with an os 46. One day while flying, the wing failed at the dihedral joint. Only plane to ever so this to me in flight. I've been tempted to build another

Steve, This is one of the less expensive kits out there. I was worried about the weakness of the wing at the center (dihedral) joint, so I put a two inch strip of fiberglass on the sheeting at the joint. It has to help. I got some Gray on today. Haven't quite decided how I will do the covering at the nose yet, but I will think of something. John

I got the tail area covered today,the base colors are on. John

This is turning into an attractive color scheme, John !

Thanks Tom. I got some more Blue on today, and it is time to quit. I still have the control surfaces, and nose to do. I still haven't decided what I am going to do at the front. John