Piper Tripacer to Pacer refurb

Now then always a glutton for punishment whilst i am currently involved with my DH2 repairs i also have a 1/3 scale Piper Tripacer in for a restore too! and when i get stuck on DH things i intend to tinker with this,now i cant promise daily updates but i will if anyone has a liking for civilian aircraft post the occasional pic and a few words,

so to start a brief resume of said model, it is, as a lot of my models are a purchase of a second hand airframe a few years ago,(i have a weakness for a scruffy airframe with "potential" the wood bashers ARTF) i have flown it quite a bit (its used to tow gliders, yes i admit it i,m a glider guider too!!) but its always bugged me that its a bit heavy and the nose leg was always a bit prone to bending if the landing was not perfect or on rough ground,

so the model...1/3 scale equals 120" wingspan, power comes from a Zenoah 80 twin, but its a bit portly at 40lbs,
so the intent is to change it to a Piper Pacer (tail dragger, this is a very popular conversion in the real world too!!) and lighten the wing structure, a compete recover and new colour scheme, to do this i have already made a new u/carriage for it and will post the pics of it if you want, (more engineering stuff sorry) which is already 2lb lighter than the trike system .

so you all up for it!!

chris

OK i will !!!!


cjp

yup yup yup, wot Eric said up there

Yes this will be another interesting refurb looking forward to it.

Yes please.
i can hopefully pick up some hints to improve my builds.

i think the engine silencer will be an art form in itself

i do hope so. i am a big art lover.

well i will/should be in t.shed later as soon as i dig the snowdrift away from door and put some heating on, and as the DH2 is in limbo awaiting its metal bashing i will endeavor to take some pics of the Pacer later and get a bit of fetteling done. its a bit of a challenge doing the pacer as its quite a big chunk to work on in my little workshop, IE wingspan 10ft workshop span 8ft, fus length 7ft!!!

yes Al the Zorst is a nice bit o metalwork cheers mate,

chris

HI Peeps

well not had time to do the engineering pics yet so on to some woodwork for the moment.

one of the objectives of this refurb is to put the tripacer on a diet, so wings first, here is a wing panel pre any work










here is the same wing panel naked

next post i start the work

chris

looks good sir.
how are the ailerons worked ?

So as Blue Peter says, here,s on i did earlier

this is the other wing panel after a bit of work, the problem with this plane is that all the wood is solid sheet/blocks everywhere so the aim is to remove all unwanted tree












since the photo,s were taken and the work done i have had another rethink on the wing particularly the wing tips and i will be making new ones compleatly from the last full rib it will be replaced with an alluminium tube outline and a light ply rib to rplace the ply balsa and solid block at the LE

CJP

certainly thinned the wood out in the wing sir.

if you look closely on the wing panels you will see that the servo,s on the fretted out ones, have moved this is another tweak whilst work is being done to put them in a posistion to allow either fully internal linkages or semi internal so i dont have great big ugly holes in the under surface, i will be CNC cutting some new aileron and elevator control horns from GRP sheet soon to give the right angles to get full movement especially on the flaps.










old pos,ns










new

to be honest you cant tell the servos have moved in the pics cos its only a few mm to get them into centre of ribs, just me being piccy, but i have moved em honest.

chris

The reason for the intensive weight loss programme is two fold, one reason is its also my glider tug and any weight saved helps the motor especial with 30lb of 1/3 scale Grunau Baby fastened behind it, but the main reason is i have bought a float kit for it and intend to do some flying off water, and i need to keep it below 20 kgms once its all naked and thinned down i will weigh it, estimate the weight of the covering and paint and see what i have to play with weight wise for the floats, if i can get the plane down to 35/36 lb this will give me 9lbs for the floats,

chris