Before I leave the cowl and engine compartment for other components I'm going to jump ahead a tad to a step of the film covering that I will go into later in more detail. But this comes under the area of a minor detail, but one that can make a nice difference in presentation of the finished project and a huge decrease in frustration level. The basic color scheme of this aircraft is going to be similar to the strega pictured above. Black primary color, white secondary and trim in yellow and orange. Maybe a little something else, I have to wait to see how it lays out. But the entire lower half of the fuse is going to be black. Some places are just aweful (read nearly impossible) to cover well. So why kill yourself? Most notably in this plane the area where the cowl joint is at in the nose block that the magnets are mounted in and the air exhausts and ducting. If you notice when I did the air exhaust I added a keel between the two openings to visually eliminate the hole thru the fuselage that would have been visible both on the ground and in the air. Then I added a duct above it to increase stiffening and direct air thru the belly pan as well as out the exhaust ducts. Covering all that intricate small surface would be nuts. (sorry my humble perspective there). Its inside the fuse. Its not part of the outside surface. It doesn't have to be high gloss, or even smooth. Its all in shadows. It just needs to not be seen. In this case it needs to be black. The area were the magnets face on the cowl nose block will be similar, you could look into that area and not see black and its going to be a tough area to cover and the bottom of the nose bowl opening the same. Solution? The traditionalists are going to love this..... dope.
Notice I did not do the entire insides of the plane. You can. But I have found I often need to do additional grinding and glueing later on. Paint just inhibits the bonds. Remember, battery packs will change (as we will find later, already have), timers and esc's may get changed out, indeed motors and mounts may get redesigned and changed. Not having paint in there leaves this a much easier deal. Glow folks obviouisly have to seal some how. Your choice with your favorite. And I know there has been some discussion about protection from glow fuel at circles getting blown into electrics. Again, your choice. But all I want is to get rid of non black visuals on the model when its done. On the inside all I did was the areas that might show. The battery will cover the rest of the opening area of the exhausts when viewed from the bottom looking up so no reason to black there.
Also, I do not want a smooth nor a sealed surface. When I go to cover, I want the surface as porous as possible. I want grain and as we will see later, I'm even going to make the surface so porous you aren't gonna believe it. I'll warn you now, you will think I have lost it when we get there. Suffice it to say now that smooth, non-porous surfaces trap air and make bubbles that are difficult to make go away. I want to avoid having film finish on painted or sealed surfaces whenever possible.
bob branch