Hi gang, its been a while since I last posted. I have finally made time available to get a couple planes airworthy again, and decided to use this opportunity to fix my favorite Cardinal. This arf is about 4 years old, had maybe slightly more than two hundred flights on it, and several crashes.

I have just replaced the leadouts. There was no wear on the bellcrank, I just dont trust crimps. (lost more than one plane to a failed crimp). I am happy to replace the original covering. the edges were lifting badly as of its last flights. The film was a nightmare to remove. There is still pigmented goo in the corners, its hard to remove.

But my questions are,  1, what is the fues made of? its really sorta heavy. Sturdy, but heavy. it seems harder than hard balsa and softer than plywood. If I remember right, my arf weighed 50oz with a LA40 installed. And 2, will the remaing glue from the original covering make it impossible to apply new film? I have had no luck removing the old stuff with MEK, acetone or even dope thinner. Any thoughts, anyone been down this road before?

It sure is good to be back at my workbench again. After this I will be finishing a plane I started three years ago 

Greg

If you are going to use a covering darker or the same color I wouldn't worry about left over glue, I would be more concirned with oil soaked wood. Tip, next time use a heat gun to remove the covering. Balsarite or foam friendly CA can be used over oil to help the covering stick. See the "Undressing My Score" thread..

Hi Bob, I just read your "Score" thread. I wish I read that first, or at least asked before I started peeling. Its all good tho, I got lots of time eye-balling the structure while I was removing the old stuff. I didnt have any noticable oil soaked wood. I kept the seams pretty well stuck down with epoxy. Not very pretty, but effective. I'll put some pics up when I can, maybe this weekend.

happy to have glue on my fingers again

Greg

Yeah I stripped a Cardinal ARF. The fues wood was indeed a mystery. Sweet smelling, some kind of ply laminated to balsa. Hung it up to dry for a month or so. I think the "seasoning" did it good. The huge cut outs keep it light enough. Get as much glue off as you can. If I can ever get wing straight (so far I've tried this and that "trick," but it's a STUBBORN warp of 1/4" at the trailing edge) I'll cover the wing with monokote and do the fues in silkspan and dope. That way I won't be fighting delaminating covering. I fiberglassed the nose and sunk in 1/8" thick aluminum plates to back up the mounting bolts. All this to help with the DREADED PROFILE BAD VIBES. It was a shock tho, seeing the fues construction with the china kote stripped off. (How do you like those big pliers, file and so forth, fixing an ARF Profile must be a serious business.)

I know several that are involved in the prototyping of Brodak's ARF/ARCs, and have learned that the Chinese seem incapable (or uncaring) of choosing wood or wood grains for particular applications...they seem to use the piece that is the closest in size to their requirement.

It is some wierd wood though...

http://stunthanger.com/smf/index.php?action=dlattach;topic=12154.0;attach=40616;image

And the wood is also patched.

Look at my thread on patched wood on Tut2

   But I know ARF manufacturers at least do some sorting of the wood, and reject some. I have a bunch of the reject wood that Elliot Scott bought. It's all that crummy straight-grained stuff that only weighs 4.2 lb/cu ft. Real weak.

     Brett

Hmmmm, this is where I should say something I'll have to apologize for later....       

Its been a while since I did an update, so here it is,.... the plane is done.  it took a while to finish, but its done. It was at 50oz when I crashed it last, and its at 50oz all done and balanced. I removed the fues gear, a total of 5oz (wheel pants, Dubro tires and aluminum struts). I added a bit of lite ply to the wing to make a good (I hope) wing mounted gear atachment. I put two sections of aluminum arrow shafts in the fues to add some integrity to the fues. I had routered the balsa between the nose doublers and layed the arrow shafts in with gorilla glue. The fues had broke three times in the same place in my years of flying the plane. So I wanted to beef up the thin section of the fues over the wing. I also installed a OS46LA instead of my trusty OS40LA. And I put some really light balsa in the open holes of the fues. I doped the fues and tail feathers, and only ultra coted the wing and flap.

cant wait to fly it. it was fun fixing it up again.

Greg