It is easy to repair and set level - not worth skipping. It's not just an advanced contest thing. You will enjoy flying it a lot more and with less chance of crashing, if you just remove it and attach level. No big deal to do, but perhaps a big deal not to do.
For the tank attachment, here's one method. For a start, just place the tank in line with the fuselage and parallel to the thrust line, but about 1/16" - 3/16" above the venturi center/thrust line, and mark for two 3/32"-dia adjacent holes above and two below. Make 3/32" dia wire "J" hooks by bending four short pieces of piano wire into "J" shapes, with enough straight portion to sink 1/4" or more into the fuselage holes, without bringing the bent end into contact with the fuselage surface. Leave enough space to slip rubber bands past the curved ends. Nick the straight parts (Dremel disk, if you have one, file or saw otherwise) of the "J"s so that epoxy can fill them for a mechanical fit. Clean the hooks with acetone. Then insert epoxy followed by the hooks into the holes, so that the bent ends face away from the tank and are high enough above the fuselage surface that rubber bands can be inserted under each hook end. Remove excess , and let set up. Wrap bands between hooks and over tank to hold it in place. That's less than half an hour's work for anyone with a wire bending tool.
I've attached photos to illustrate only the finished product, since I couldn't find pictures of notched, bent hooks before insertion. The first picture of Bob Piktel's Yak-9 shows thinner wire, but about what you’d want. He has left no vertical adjustment space, but has placed the tank about where he thought it should go. Next shows a SkyRay installation. Its hooks are further apart than the tank height and take a light-weight plywood cradle with fore and aft restraints and places for fine-tuning shims. The next is my P-Force nose, which had a similar cradle. Last are of my recessed-tank hooks. The recess is self-constraining fore and aft, but is wide enough vertically to take adjustment shims, one of which is shown protruding some from under the tank in the last picture. These hooks may be removed with a twisting motion of pliers, and you can see in the last picture that a larger vertical spacing had resulted in removal of previous hooks. I know that all but the first photo are more than you wanted, but you might want to use something similar down the road.
SK
Topic: Slowly but surely (Read 2954 times)