I am looking at the Zagi 400x as my second plane. I have been flying a GWS Cub FD for a couple of months now and I am looking for my next challenge. After reading too many threads about the Zagi, I have decided that I like the look of an UltraCote covered Zagi over the Zagi tape. As someone who has never covered a plane before is this worth attempting? What equipment would I need to accomplish this? (I am planning on going to the Pacific NW Model Expo this weekend and trying to find some good deals.)

Any tips/tricks would also be greatly appreciated.

Eric,

I am working on a slope slayer which is all EPP. I have the ultracoat and will be covering on Friday. I haven't covered a model in many years, and it was balsa back then with monocote. I'm planning to take it slow. Anyones experience with ultracoat and foamies would be appreciated.

Todd

Todd,
If no one else answers can you please report back as to how your's went?

Well....if you want to be a beta test user, you could look at http://www.yourzagi.com/covering.htm and see if it makes sense. The site isn't open yet, but I would appreciate any feedback positive or negative that you might have for that page (or anything). I finished most of the covering page today and there are a few things left to do on it, but have peek and see it it helps or confuses

Oh yea, Ultracote is very easy to do and looks great.

mtayl,
You instruction are very good for the UltraCote. When I saw the first pic of the tape covered one I was a little scared. For covering the nose you are correct about notching the tape. (This experience comes from taping off other things for painting.) It will never look great, but with practice can be acceptable.

I do have one questions (or suggestion to be added to you site); when you said that the white is the base coat and the blue and red just lay on top of it, what is the procedure for the overlaid colors? Does the base layer need to be preped first? Is the procedure the same for sealing/shrinking the top layers?

From what I could gather, before I started my Ultracote adventure, some people do not overlay the colors simply because it adds weight and might bleed through visually. I should probably reword that and state that the entire wing was done in white, then I laid the blue and red strips down. The order was

1) entire wing is white
2) laid the red down on top of the white
3) laid the blue strip with one edge overlapping the red and on top of the white

I had read (and it makes sense) that darker colors need to lay on top of lighter colors to help prevent the translucent quality of the film from showing the other colors.

The only prep work that I did was to sand the entire wing and lightly spray the entire thing with S77. Honestly, I'm not sure I'm going to do that again (spray it I mean). Ultracote already has an adhesive on it and the S77 stickiness caused some swearing when I was laying it down. It seemed to hurt more than help.

I did not do any prep work laying the other colors in. The only thing that I noticed was when I was sealing the blue layer (top), was that I got some strange wrinkles. It went away when I turned the heat up a bit, but I'm assuming that I had missed an area when I put the white down and so it was shrinking based upon the heat of the upper layers.

Maybe I should move the Ultracote example first and hide the tape at the bottom?

Thanks for the clarification.

You know, you're right though. I just went back and read it again and I noticed that there wasn't anything on there about overlaying colors, doing designs, cutting it, etc. Major dropout on my part, thanks for bringing it to my attention!

I have covered two foam planes (Kavan Partenavia Twin and a Zagi 400x) with Ultracoat Plus and I love the stuff. Well, I really don't have much to compare too, since these were my first two RC planes EVER! :-)

My Zagi 400x turned out nice with the UC plus. mtayl, is correct on the advise. Good job! If you need any help with web programming/desing, let me know. I do it for a living.

Oh, and UC plus is easy to smooth out again with the iron after going nose in from 90 feet up!

Mike

UC Plus on The Twin, also worked out nice after a nose in from 60 feet up while dancing in fire ants!

Econokote works fine and I believe a lot less expensive than Ultracoat.

Thanks Mike. Nice looking Zagi and Twin. I like the chrome on the Zagi. I knew I should have bought a Twin during the hobby-lobby christmas fire-sale, very sharp looking aircraft. I had it in my basket about 4 times and wound up buying the sunwheel biplane. It's amazing slow which makes it fun.

Serious question: Did the Ultracote Plus work any better for you? I have read several times not to use it but I'm not sure why they said that. I'll have to hunt that down again and refresh my memory.

So is there any advantage to going with UltraCote Lite?

<quote><b><i>any advantage to going with UltraCote Lite</b></i></quote>

On my Zagi 3C, I used 3M Super Strength filament tape over the wing, I sanded the tape, sprayed it with an even coat of Super 77, let dry for at least 6 hours and then covered with Ultracote. An important note...let the Super 77 dry! It is real easy to work with and the adhesive properties are superb! The end result was a great looking wing that takes some abuse and looks as good now as it did when I finished it.

As for overlapping colors, always put the darker color on top. Don't worry about bleeding through, the Ultrcote is fairly opaque. Also, the weight from a 1/4 inch overlap is minimal.

Cheers,

Kent

Finished my slopeslayer today. Used Ultracoat and followed matyl's instructions from http://www.yourzagi.com/covering.htm .

They were a great help. Particularly the tip about setting iron temp. I'm very happy with the covering, and would be suprised if I ever cover another foamie with packing tape. The covering just looks much nicer, and takes about the same amount of work.

I'll post pictures in the next day or two.

Todd