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Speed,Combat,Scale,Racing => Combat => Topic started by: John Craig on September 29, 2015, 07:14:10 PM
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I have built 3 combat planes, Euro style; but have 9 more to build. These are the foam core leading edge, with just a few 1/8 balsa ribs, spruce spars, spruce spar trailing edge. Cutting the parts is no problem. Even with so few parts it still seems to go together slow. Making sure things are lined up seems to be the task that slows things up. What building techniques, secrets, or building jig am I missing?
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No help from me sorry. I only build foamies. I would suggest trying to get a hold of Mike Wilcox or the Minor brothers on the MACA facebook page. I think Mike used to sell kits similar to what you are building. I cannot find the web page so he may not be doing it anymore, but he probably has the best tips for you.
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Lester Haurey builds the F2D kits. They go together fast since everything is notched for assemble. http://streamershuttle.blogspot.com/
Other wise a jig will be required for normal F2D airplanes.
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I would ask Lester Haury
http://streamershuttle.blogspot.com/
Like Mike I have not built one like you are doing. I suspect for production work a few pre set jigs for the trailing edge would be the way to speed up the process
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hi John. I just happen to have done what you are doing. I bought 50 stels kits from Scott Newkirk when first trying to Learn F2d.
The trick is this. make a jig for the absolute correct angle to create the trailing edge and it's joiner piece. To do this, I used a cad program (auto cad) and put the angled piece in the library so I could print out multiples. Spray glue them to the material, cut to size, sand on good sander to the final lines. This gave me a perfect part. Next I made a holding fixture for gluing, and a fixture to hold the leading edge in it's correct position and attach the center rib straight and true. The wingtips need to be perfect as well (angle to compliment the T.E angle) Again, I used auto cad to create wingtips that had the correct angle to match the T.E. If you don't do this you will get warps and wows.
The rest assembles itself once the T.E is attached. The half ribs find there correct place in the wing.
Sequence for me was this:
Center rib to L.E.
Wingtips to L.E.
assemble T.E.
attach T.E. assembly to L.E. and center rib / wingtips.
install half ribs.
install controls.
If you make a decent jig for all this, the wings are very fast to build and fly straight right off the board.
Good luck.
Ken
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I'd add building a jig for tapering the spars, and another one for assembling the foam and spars. This one could also be use for holding the leading edge while the paper wrap dries.
Getting the parts shaped exactly is very important, as Ken says. The idea of CAD drawing parts an printing them out as templates is much more accurate than making one template part and trying to shape parts from that. The printing method is nearly as accurate as laser cutting and a lot cheaper/quicker than farming it out.
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Build more then one at a time use whatever method works best for you whether it be a jig or weights whatever works for you make an assembly line for your parts and work on different sections while others are drying sounds like you know things need to be straight thats really all you gotta worry about. cutting out parts takes the most time. I suggest putting motor pin through the block into the foam youll get more rpm in your motor and it will be stronger. Shawn Cook
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Finishing up the first 3 planes. All the following will be much easier & quicker. With your help I have come up with ideas for 3 jigs, one for the trailing edge & wing tips, another for spar/wing/fuselage assembly, the last to hold everything as I add the ribs.
Thank you for your help & suggestions.
J. Craig
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One thing I liked about Riley's Sneeker kits was he supplied jig blocks.
Set me up a pine board with the jig pieces and could knock a wing out quickly.