Cheetah

The elevator 'ball & socket' joint in place.

Next a simple and direct pull/pull to the forward mounted servo.
The cockpit and cockpit canopy excavated out.

This is just the initial dig. It may need some more when the rx, ESC and battery are actually fitted.
All the 'excavated' foam from everywhere is in the bag and weighs 3.5 g or close to the weight of a servo.

That fin looks offset ?

certainly doesn't look square?

The issue is the 'left banana' in the fuselage.
I have managed to reduce it with heat but not completely so the right offset of the fixed rudder is an 'approximation' to counter it.
One of the joys of cheap foam RTFs.

Sods law is alive and well.
About to install the elevator servo my last 3.7 g only to find it does not work or rather it only does when the case is squeezed!
Obviously a bad connection inside. Had a look but without a microscope no chance of even spotting what might be wrong on its tiny 8 x 10 mm double sided circuit board.
More on order but China deliveries are even slower than usual.
Not a lot of planes over the NW at the moment.

I live under a flight path into Manchester, i have seen one come over the last two weeks and it was way up high
Yes sods law really is a sod

From where I am I can just see (normally) jets going into Heathrow, think I saw 2 yesterday! I also live a few miles from fairoaks and Farnborough airports, usually have loads of light aircraft doing circuits and bumps from fairoaks and business jets going into Farnborough now nothing...
Simon, if you want that servo looking at I'll gladly have a go to save you the wait, I recently shortened the lead on a nano servo for the Gamine successfully by desoldering it from the circuit board...

Paul
Thanks for the offer but there is really no rush. If yesterdays reports are right it could be the autumn before we can fly again!

So I have occupied myself making little printed fittings to hold the canopy on.
A magnet holder.

The magnet is 3 mm diam and 0.8 mm thick. Similar in the rear of the canopy.
The front of the canopy has a printed peg.

With a matching socket in the fuselage.
Took far too long & many attempts to get the printing exactly right and then installed but eventually achieved 'no visible means of support'.


Just as well there is not much else to do.

The wing is now glued in place.

This allows some predictions of the likely all up weight.
The air frame but still short of the elevator servo weighs 121.4 g.
The Motor with prop & prop adaptor is 13 g, 10A ESC 8.2 g, rx 5 g and the missing servo 4 g.
Total 152 g
800 mAh 2s 54.2 g
Looking good for just below 210 g complete.

Testing the motor and prop is next.

As I couldn't find my universal test stand (I was never intended for such small motors anyway) and in the spirit of being daft I printed one.

Its 2300kV and with its recommended 5 x 3 prop on a 3 s it produced just under the 50 W specified drawing 4.8 A.
That was the end of the good news as I very briefly managed to reverse connect the band new 10 A ESC to release some magic smoke!
Next was to cut off the nose of the Cheetah and print a matching bulkhead.

It will ultimately use a 5 x 3 folding prop that had a 1" spinner so the nose will be made good to match that. Hobbyking no longer have those props in stock so I will have to pinch the one that's on the Lidl.
I also don't have a small 400 mAh 3s so that's another item to be ordered.
Like all these cheap form conversions the cost of the actual glider is trivial.

Spent another few hours designing the motor mount and extension to allow the fuselage to be made good to the spinner.

With the 5 x 3 folding prop in place.

The nose will be made up with thin Depron planks. This a 'test' using an earlier scrap motor mount.

The complete motor mount with the Depron nose make up weighs 2g.

Watched the Corona Virus No 10 briefing. On questioned about NHS staff testing, or rather the lack of it, there was the same response as for previous 2 days. "We have got to get it right. A bad test is worse than no test" which I think is politics speak for 'Oops! We got it wrong'!

Thought a bit about cooling for the ESC.
Inside the cockpit not only would it be very well insulated but would also be 'sharing' with heat from the battery so decided it really should go outside.
So with the heat shrink removed it sits in a shallow printed mount let into the side wall of the cockpit.

The wires go directly through the cockpit wall.
Yet more time consuming activity!

I am delaying fitting the elevator servo until I have the battery so I can get a suitable CofG without any ballast.