Over the next few days I hope to share my approach for building/installing darthdrk's first fuse for the Dauphin/Zoom/Shogun/Zap/MicroStar 400 family of micro helis. It's a really slick Augusta A-109 and I plan on turning it into the USCG MH-68 currently being used for Homeland Defense and drug interdiction missions. This build will show one approach for mounting the body to the Zoom chassis. Hang on it's going to be a fun ride.

Oh yea, the MH-68 is the bad boy with the machine guns sticking out the side doors in case the "Perps" won't pull over

Cheers - Boyd
AMA 80393
Major USAF
Retired

As in Bad Boys 2?

Originally Posted by Lynxman

As in Bad Boys 2?

That works

First item of business - To ensure success in this project and keep your frustrations in check, get the Zoom 400 airframe flight capable and trimmed out. Resolve all items in this area before wrapping this beauty of a fuselage around a heli that has flight issues.


Here we are after one evening's work. The fuselage is made up from three module assemblies; nose section. midbody and tail cone. This permits easy mounting of the body to the Zoom chassis. In this case, I have tentatively decided to permanently join the tail cone and mid body modules since it appears that they will slip forward over the mechanics by only removing the T/R gear case. The nose module will be set up as a removable module to allow access to the main machinery of the helicopter.

Basic tools to get the assembly job done are shown below. Nothing exoctic required. Substitutes will work but I strongly recommend staying with the Testors Plastic Model Cement and also suggest using it sparingly. In this case the less glue the better the joint will be and you will avoid deforming the plastic parts during assembly. Careful work trimming the excess plastic away from the vacuum-formed components will yield a sturdy, yet light weight, body for your Zoom/Shogun/MicroStar/Dolphin/Zap 400 chopper.

Spare plastic material is included in the kit for fabrication of the horizontal tail plane and to make the required joiner strips to attach the two halves of the body together. Joiner strips are prepared by cutting one or two of the supplied pieces of flat plastic stock into 1/4" strips. These are glued to the inside of the seam line on one half of the module half leaving about a 1/8" shelf exposed to glue the matching side in place.

The pictures tell the story to get you to the point of having all the halves joined. Tomorrow we'll tackle the method of attaching the fuselage to the chassis.

couple more pics....................

Spent some time today fitting up the mechanics...............more tomorrow

Time to fab and fit the Horizontal stab.

Dimensions are shown in the following pics. When locating the tail cone module penetrations for the "H" stab be certain to arrange things so that the tailboom for the mechanicals will pass over not under the installed stab.

No material is provided in the kit for the core of the "H" stab. Either balsa or DEPRON foam will work. I chose to build the core from DEPRON from my Plankflyer bench stock material bin. The kit includes two fittings to fair the stab to the fuselage and you can use some of the styrene flat sheet stock to skin the top of the stab as I did. I used a length of 3mm CF tubing for the leading edge for both shaping and damage resistance reasons.

LG design and fab tomorrow

Progress on Landing Gear and wheel arrangements using parts from the local AutoZone (vacuum line fittings) and the bits box was on the schedule today. GWS 25mm light weight foam wheels were selected for their appearance and lack of weight. "T" fittings from a vacuum line fittings assortment were used as struts for the wheels with a length of CF 3mm tubing as a cross member for the mains. More later on attaching the LG to the chassis.

Boyd, this is excellent work and I still think you should write a book. Are they considering a Huey? If so, I'll design an ISD voice/sound playback chip with the distinctive 'accoustic signature' ;-)

- Tom

Thanks for that Tom Let's see, if I remember the sounds heard on the flight line at DaNang, it would be a whop, whop, whop, whop as the Huey's departed for parts north, west and south of the base gotta' love that blade slap.

I love these threads of Boyds. Interesting and very informative.

Lots of fun for me too

any up dates?

Originally Posted by junbug

any up dates?

Awaiting a T/R driveshaft cover from darthdrk so we can go to the paint booth ...........and we have been playing in Hornet 2 land to be honest

http://www.rcgroups.com/forums/showt...8&page=1&pp=15

Cheers - Boyd

Sweet job so far Boyd!

Please say the gear will retract?