Topic: Scratch built 1/6 Hunter FGA 9

Dizz - this summer is like winter, so I thought I'd get cracking! 

A little more progress, but going slow as my kids are on school holidays and demand that I spend some time with them! 

Top rear fuselage now fully planked, shown next to my little Habu to give an idea of scale:



Lower rear fuselage framework together:



A closeup of the airbrake servo detail:



And a couple of the trial fit of top and bottom rear fuselage - it's upside down:





Working will be getting in the way of building again for the next 6 days, so plenty of time to think about the little gotchas that always crop up! 

Cheers - Pat

Very tidy and delicious that is Pat. Lovely work, probably the most beautiful jet aircraft ever made. Certainly nothing nowerdays is as pretty.

Very tidy and delicious that is Pat. Lovely work, probably the most beautiful jet aircraft ever made. Certainly nothing nowerdays is as pretty.

agreed. What a superb kit!

Thanks fellas

I'm enjoying seeing it go from my CAD drawings on a laptop to CnC cut parts and now a real structure!  Very satisfying.  I haven't built a model from a kit of parts in about 15 years, and to know the kit of parts is all my own doing is great!

Coming along nicely Pat 
I didn't manage to get the last set of stuff cut last week, but will do tomorrow.  If you are away again then I guess you won't be here for a Merryfield session next w/e.  No worries though because I'll be up on 19th and 20th at Weston Zoyland so will deliver then.
Have a good trip,
Dizz

After a few weeks of nothing, today I managed to get into the workshop for a day!  A little more progress on the vertical stab, built up in a fairly typical manner.  Stab ribs are made from 6mm balsa, and the structure is sheeted with 3/32 balsa. 



The rudder ribs from 2mm ply, with a leading edge built up from 6mm balsa. The rudder is skinned in proskin - my first go at this method, and so far I like it! 

Some of those lovely Hawker curves starting to take shape:

There was a break in the weather last weekend! I actually got to fly my Raptor, which made a nice change. Anyway, a little more progress:





I started building the tailplane framework - the tolerances on the CnC cutting are very tight so I needed to fettle the fit a little. A little time with a needle file loosened up the fit enough to put it together. The ribs are fitted into the slots in the main spar and rotated into position, so need some round edges filed on the inner edges of the pre-cut slots to allow the twist to fit. The leading edge slot on the root rib was not quite long enough, so needed to be extended by 3mm for an accurate fit. All other ribs and spars fitted perfectly, so much so that the structure almost becomes self jigging as you build it!

Still trying to work out how I'm going to build the aerodynamic bullet fairing between the vertical stab and the tailplane, and also how I'll build the parachute housing on the rear fuselage. Onwards and upwards! Tomorrow I'll be skinning the top surfaces of the tailplane and building the elevators.

Looking great Pat!

Ahoy Shippers from Singers
Just back fm Orchid Road 
 
Tail bullet - do your CAD thing and when I get back I'll 3D CNC it in balsa block.  You can then glass it followed by hollowing with a Dremel bit.
I can't remember the shape at the moment, but probably be able to do trhe same thing for the parachute housing.
Have a Stumax 110-52 hiding in the suitcase tempting me to start tinkering with a SR53 idea.  Off to sea tomorow - what is that all about?
 
Dizz

SR53 for P60!!!

Top surfaces of the tailplane have been skinned, and the resulting surface is light and rigid.



I was just looking at where I'd planned to put the servos, only to discover I've made the tailplane a little thin for the 8411's I'd planned on using! Looks fine in the drawing, but the tapering section and sweep means the servo is too thick to fit, by about 2mm. A little annoyed, to say the least! Now scratching my head as to what to do. I may have to add some 2mm cap strips onto the ribs to give me the required depth. This is where I wanted the servo's to be positioned:



This means the servo sits a long way proud, so I tried the servo here:



This improves things regarding the depth, but now the servo and pushrod is not at 90 degrees to the surface, which is far from ideal. What I need is a decent servo around 15mm thick with the desired torque I'll need to drive the elevators... Not sure it exists. More head scratching required. The only thing in my favour is that the elevator is quite small, and deflections should not need to be huge - Time to dig out the servo load calculator!

Dizz - I'll get drawing for the tail bullet - the parachute housing I'm going to do some thinking on.  Look forward to seeing your new toy! 

Hope you were a good boy down Orchid Road!

Fisty - you flown that Habu 32 yet?

Any progress Pat? 

   Hi Steve - sadly, no. The tailplane is sitting on the work bench exactly as in the last photo, untouched in over 2 months!   Had some family issues to deal with recently, so not much time to get into the workshop - hoping to do a bit more from the middle of next week onward, as I have 10 days off, and 2012 should be better for building!

Hi Pat,
MKS do a selection of slim wing servos. Metal gear and cases and up to 8kgs pul on a 6V supply. I can vouch for the quality. Try T9 Hobbysport. Not cheap though.

Or speak to Marc at GBRJet - he uses them in the EDF and P20 stinger jets....

Cheers fellas!  They should be perfect, and will fit nicely in the vertical stab for the rudder too!

Hi Pat
Good to see you back on it.  Are you going to CJs at Abingdon next Friday? My phone crashed on Thursday and I lost all the texts and pnone numbers otherwise I would have given you a bell.
Dizz

Just ordered 2 x MKS 6125 servo's.  Nice looking bit of kit with the required spec and performance - not cheap, but good value I'd say - you get what you pay for! Another stocking filler for my missus to wrap up! 

Finally got around to doing some more work on my Hunter.  Elevator servos are now mounted in the tailplane, which has now been skinned and primed on the lower surface.  I have done a little more work on the fuselage too, prepping the vertical stab for tailplane mounting.  I just have to figure out a way of gluing in the tailplane support box into the vertical stab without permanently gluing the tailplane in!

I have also done a little more work on the front fuselage formers, drilling 10mm holes for cabling and a little weight reduction.  Need to skin the key load bearing formers with carbon and run some carbon tows along the edges before more building can take place, so lots of work needed with little to show.

One pic of the tailplane:


Hopefully work will progress a little quicker now! 

Looking good!     Are you aiming for a maiden this year?

This looks like a great build, are you planning on selling the plans/cad files to the rest of us?

Hi Sverrir - hoping to maiden this year, but at this rate it might be 2015... 

Tinkerer - if the model flies well, I'll tweak the plans to try and correct any of the issues I've discovered during the build and make them available to those who want them.  Nothing ARTF about this - I spend a lot of time trying to think how to do things!  Hopefully this build thread will remind me of what I did when!

Hi Sverrir - hoping to maiden this year, but at this rate it might be 2015... 

Sounds like my Thunderbolt!   

The only thing in my favour is that the elevator is quite small, and deflections should not need to be huge - Time to dig out the servo load calculator!

Pat,
Just FYI, although the elevators are quite small, they do have quite a large deflection.  When you pull 'up', IIRC, it's around 40-45 degrees with a bit less 'down'.


Mark.

Hi Mark

I've done the calculations, and with the servo rated at 6.6kgcm (4.8V) up to 8.2kgcm (6V), they're good for 45 degrees up, 40 degrees down deflection at 150mph.  Good to go! 

A little more done.  Tailplane complete, barring hinging:



Front fuselage started:

Looking good Pat, stick at it! 

Can you guess what it is yet?  Fuselage top coming together - quite pleased with the way the sheeting has gone on.  Complex curves are done with balsa strips about 10mm wide, and anything with a simpler curve has a larger sheet.  I used thin cyano to glue the strips to the formers with white glue between the strips to bond them together.  The thin strips allow me to bend the balsa in more than one plane and the cyano holds the wood in place once correctly shaped.  One hand in a plastic bag stops fingers sticking to the balsa as the cyano sets - learned the hard way!  :

Beautiful work Pat. 

Bl@@dy hell pat! you really are cracking on! nice work!

Good work Pat. I use the same combination of adhesives for planking. It really saves a lot of time and effort trying to pin things down securely, then trying not to dislodge them with subsequent planks! Of course, I hadn't thought of plastic bags so usually I have hands covered in CA when I'm done 

Nice work buddy.................will it be ready for M'F on 20th 

Nice work buddy.................will it be ready for M'F on 20th 

Only if you get the intake moulding to me by tomorrow! 

Speaking of which, don't do anything with the drawings I've given you - I have redone them for simpler milling!  Be in touch soon mate! 

OK Pat.  I was so busy at sea this weekend I started drawing something a bit bigger for my spare Stumax