Project Zero is nearly finished!

The wing is completely ready to go, servos and all. The fuselage is as good as it's gonna get and the cowl, which turned out to be the single biggest project, is ready for paint. I've even ironed out all the wrinkles in the covering. All that's left is to repair the broken "window" on the canopy and then open my wallet for the radio gear and engine!

It shall fly by summer's end if not sooner. Going on a big summer vacation and I want to save my sheckels for the time being.

Wow, have I fallen behind. These were the newest pictures that I had...and there's been more work done since these were taken!

The wing halves have been epoxied together and the covering replaced as best as I could. It was wrinkled pretty badly on the crash, but it really can't be seen with the wing in place on the fuselage.

I've cleaned up that fuel tank support area in the fuselage a bit better than what you see in the picture. That'll be hidden by the fuel tank once it's installed.

Thanks to my buddy, I now have a Hobbico Torqmaster starter and Hobbico power panel, both nearly new. One flyer at the field this past Sunday brought two boxes of old equipment a friend of his was throwing away. This netted me a second Torqmaster, an old Futaba Attack 4 AM transmitter and RCD receiver with Futaba "G" servo connections(!) as well as...the coveted Hobbico covering iron! My buddy's young son got to the iron before I did thinking the thing was pretty cool and despite the fact that his dad didn't need it; I wound up paying him two bucks for it.

It's nice to know who your friends are.

The gentleman who gave me "Project Zero" called me at work on Friday night and had me on the phone for nearly a half an hour. He was concerned about what had happened to me with a frequency issue a couple of weeks ago which nearly set an elderly seasonal visitor at my throat. Look at my post titled "Of age and civility" to see what I mean.

It seems as if this fellow who wanted to go upside my head has crashed the planes of other flyers on several occasions by turning on his transmitter; he may have done the same thing to me in the past. I discussed "The Curse of Channel 50" in a previous post. He may well be the source! He was there the day my Flyzone Cessna suddenly and unexpectedly went into a hard right turn just before touchdown. The result effectively destroyed my plane. I'm not accusing him of anything, believe me. It's just that he didn't claim responsibility if he was in fact responsible, which I strongly suspect to be true.

As far as "Project Zero" is concerned, things are moving along nicely and I promise to upload pictures. The wing is repaired and the two halves rejoined properly. I've rebuilt the fuselage as best as I could (and it should work just fine despite a few missing pieces which I had to fabricate and since the damage was minimal) and I even fixed the broken tail. Best part is, I didn't need to replace any covering! I just tacked it back down with some...Continue Reading