Fairey Firefly MK5 from Vance Mosher plan

I used to make mine with the same method, but yours look better than mine, looking good Sir

I admire your thinking, that's a very elegant solution.

I don't have to worry about being caught Klippy. The wife said to me "its the models and cars or me". Needless to say I have my models and nice car!!

Spent the morning trimming up the fibre glass sheet and fitting the wing fillets.

I gently heated up the glass sheet and pushed it into the wing and fuse which helped it adopt the form. Did this several times until the glass sheet took the correct form, trimmed it with a pair of scissors. Repeated for the other side, then glued them into place with resin and bulking agent to make a paste. I still had to use some pins to hold the shape. Waiting for it to all dry and see how it turns out.

I have to say your work never fails to impress Ralph !

Thanks Crash, appreciate it.

Started tidying up the section between the wing fillets on the fuselage. I cant seem to find a decent picture of the full size to get an accurate understanding of how the fuse is faired into the wing fillets. You would think some one would have thought "i'll take a picture of the fuselage fairing into the wing so that it will help Ralph when he comes to build his model". Bloody photographers, so inconsiderate!! So I will do what I think it should look like taking inspiration from a little 1/72 plastic kit and some not very helpful pictures. I used some 1/8 light balsa and lots of lightweight filler to create what I think it should look like. When the filler dries I will give it a good sand and see what it looks like.



Also had another bash at the flap system. Still not happy with it. So decided to reprogramme the servos. I'm using Hitec HS-5625 MG servos on the flaps and have the ability to be programmed, using a dongle on a laptop, for throw, speed, centre position, sensitivity and a few other bits.



At 6V they give 9.4kg.cm. I need about 28mm total throw and 180 degree of arm travel. So by my calcs at half throw (when the arm is at 90 degrees to servo, so maximum load, lever is 1.4cm) I will get 7kg. I think that should be enough. If my calcs are wrong let me know. So at each end of the travel I should get more than 9.4kg to pull the flap closed or hold fully open.

Powerful enough?
With 7 kg on each flap servo you would likely be able to raise the plane off the ground by simply extending the flaps.
It am pretty sure the full size couldn't do that.

Ah Hitec servos, i would not even have them in the house, it was one of those that brought my SU27 down

You've got me worried BB. I had them both on cycle mode on the servo tester for about 3 - 4 minutes, never missed a beat.

Mine was a 25kg one on the right hand elevator it burnt out in the full up position, we thought it was radio contact lost for a start until we fully checked the Power Box SRS box of tricks
There you go Eric never had a problem with all my Savox servos,

Today was front cowl mounting time. I've been trying to work out an elegant way to fix the cowl to the fuselage. Thinking about it, the cowl will only have to come off when i need to access the motor or the ESC. So bolting it in place will do the trick. The challenge was getting to the rear fixing bolts as there is a former / bulkhead in the way. This bulkhead has the holes for the wing location pins to go into which makes it a little structural. I thought of just having locating pins but decided against that as I wanted a tight fit of the rear of the cowl to the fuselage. Pins would allow the cowl to pull away leaving a big gap. So I decided to remove part of the bulkhead but leave enough meat to hold the wings which will give access to the bolts, you can see the section I removed in the photo. I will give the face of this former a coating of resin just to add a bit strength.



So, located the cowl onto the fuse, lined it all up, clamped it into place, easier said then done, and drilled two holes through the front former into the former that is glued to the cowl. Fitted a couple of 4mm T nuts to the cowl former and hey presto the cowl is secured at the back.



For the front I cut some tabs 2mm fibre glass sheet and tacked them onto the cowl and drilled through into the engine mount back plate. A wipe with Hysol epoxy and they are installed. Access to these fixings is by taking the spinner off. So the back and front of the cowl is fixed. I think it is a bit OTT but better safe than sorry. A bit of a pain to remove but as I said earlier hopefully i wont have to do it often.



So to get a nice tight fitting between the cowl and the fuselage I put some packing tape on the fuselage where the cowl touched and coated it with release agent. Mixed up some filler and applied it to the cowl former and pulled the cowl onto the fuselage with the bolts. removed the excess filler and let it dray before trying to separate it from the fuselage. Should give a nice tight thin join line.

With the cowl sorted and the cowl to fuselage gap filled nicely I gave the fuselage a fine sanding and glassed it with 25g/m glass cloth and finishing resin. Hopefully in the coming week I can sort out the closing issue with the flaps and glass the wing next weekend.

Nice to make some good progress.

lovely work Ralph!