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Build Log
LICKITY SPIT! (Guillows Supermarine Spitfire MK I kit 504)
The Guillows Supermarine Spitfire MK I Kit 504 has been one of my childhood favorites. This little Spitfire was pulled from my mothers house some years ago and was once a FF success. It now hangs in one of my children's room damaged but amazingly rubber still in tact. I picked this kit up at the LHS a few years ago with the intent on converting it to Micro RC and seeing if I could build it as well as I did thirty some years ago. Having just finished up a Guillows B-25 and with crappy weather, I have been spending my time slapping this little bird together. The timing was right as I was able to get a crashed Micro Trojan as the brick donor and the work board was clear. On to Balsa dust, Sticks and tissue!
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Building up the fuselage in typical Guillows fashion. Formers and keels pretty strait forward. All the balsa parts holder sheets were belt sanded for two reasons. One to lighten and two to have the parts easily pop out. Using Tightbond II for glue as it is water based, dries light, and can be rewetted if anything needs to be redone. I got tired of using CA's with coated fingers and poor sanding characteristics. The Tightbond can also be diluted a bit with water and will dry faster.
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The wing lays out again in typical Guillows fashion. Ribs were again belt sanded and popped out. If the stringer tabs pop out easily then so be-it, the ones that don't we will wait till they are glued in place and then with two disc's on the Dremel will Dremel out the tabs that were either ironwood or not formed from poor tooling.
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The little Spitfire has a short nose and long tail. As Warbirds go this fits right in so again the handy Dremel is used to reduce much of the unneeded wood on the fuselage. The Guillows Rubber power design used big formers and lot's of Logerons. None of this is necessary with electric power and no wound up rubber band that needs support. So while the structure is open we get rid of all that unneeded balsa. While in surgery we also removed the center keel in the wing area plus the sides of the formers. This gives us room for the torque rods, servo and removes unnecessary weight.
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With the wing pinned down this is a good time to cut in the ailerons. We match the ribs and box out the ailerons. I like to angle this with the bottom of the box forward. This gives the ailerons room to pivot down with a high hinge line. I rather see the gap on the bottom than the top. The ailerons are built up and sanded to fit.
The dihedral in the plans again is for a FF model. Not knowing the scale dihedral I split the difference and went with half the plans callout. Probably could have gone shallower but looks fine. Plus with aileron control dihedral is not critical. |
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It's not pretty but the motor mount is cut from pink foam and shaped to the lower plastic cowl. With Gorilla glue we set the thrust angles to down and right with the highly engineered formula of TLAR. The Gorilla glue does expand and makes up for the gaps on the foam motor mount. Little extra doesn't hurt as we need the weight up front under the hood.
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The Trojan owner had really beaten the donor. Fortunately this made organ extracting much easier. The torque rod assembly was removed and the wing saddle was prepped. With insert planked balsa the rod keepers anchored right into the soft contest balsa. Next, longer torque rods were bent and the old sleeves were used for a bearing point. The thin Music wire is simply pushed through the ribs and out to the ailerons. Once this is all good and functioning a bend is made into the ailerons and the servo control horn is glued in place. The ailerons are then hinged in place with cut up floppy disk stuff (didn't know what to call it) and balsa is used to hold the aileron rods in place for control. Nice light aileron system.
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Logerons are glued in place. Brick is installed across the keels and some pink foam was used to pad and secure the frame. See didn't need all that wood in the middle. Tail group is also cut from contest balsa and we are ready for first mock up's and airplane noises.
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With a three bladed prop figured it would be easier to spin up a spinner for the Spit. A sheetrock screw, pink foam, sanding block and a drill press the spinner spins up in no time. Cut out the prop slots and wha la! instant spinner.
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Oh boy time to start covering. We will be using Japanese tissue for the Spit. We will be using the WBPU, glue stick, Iron, WBPU method with a water windex tightening. Tissue is cut to approximate size Glue stick the areas to be attached. Oh BTW lot's of surface prep first. this means lot's of sanding the surfaces and then sealing the pours with WBPU. Once the WBPU is dry gluestick is applied to the attaching surfaces. I like to pull it tight length wise tack with hot iron then width wise and tack. The iron will give a good hold and you can work out problem areas. Finally seal all the edges with WBPU being careful not to go more than the attaching areas as anything that has WBPU on it will stay as it dries. ie a wrinkle. Spray on the water and with a heat gun dry it uniformly to shrink the tissue. Here is a great reference for covering, Fuzz's Tissue Tutorial (StMartin)
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Where to put the battery?? With the short nose it will have to go in the cowl. I like to wait until this point as we get closer to figuring out where we will need weight. I have a couple of rare earth magnets and again not being concerned of their weight decided to use a removable cowl and battery holder in it. The magnets are burrowed in the balsa firewall to be flat and epoxied in place. A sheet of wax paper is placed between the firewall and B-1 former and washers are epoxied flush with the former. In 5 minutes (really 10) and we have a removable cowl.
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The left side of the fuselage was purposely kept open for access to the micro brick. You want to make sure that all servos are plugged in and the prop is spinning the right direction before we close the access. Sure enough everything is in the right slot and we can install the last logerons, glue the wing on and cover the fuselage.
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Instead of the multiple panel tissue covering in the Guillows instruction book, we decided to cover the fuselage in two pieces. The wing saddle was cut into the tissue and again glue sticked into place. Tack down all the contact surfaces with the hot iron and the excess tissue was trimmed with a new Xacto blade. The contest balsa sanded down very neatly and made the surface for a two piece install a breeze.
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Time for another Mock Up and get this birdie on the precision scale. I like using the crappy one in my shop as it is off on the fat side. This keeps me honest and makes for a more pleasant result at weigh in on the precision scale.
That's it for today. Need to head home Lickity Spit! |
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