A tiny scale plane

Its ever so black and its getting close to its maiden!

Just the control surfaces to connect and fit the battery at an appropriate CofG.
The rest of the painting can wait.

Yes orientation could be an issue but I hope the twin booms will help a bit.
At least to start with I will not left it get very far away at all.

Controls all connected up and battery mounted to give a 25% CofG (on the spar).

The radio box is white Depron so you can easily see the LED - which hopefully will not be flashing.
Even without the bracing struts it easily passes my wing tip test so it is ready - but I am not sure I am.

21:15 hrs this evening just a gentle breeze - it flies!
Nothing too dramatic just one flight as it was getting rather dark (video out of the question) although it actually stood out well against the high cloud.
Flies pretty slowly so a glide landing no problem.

It does indeed go vertical with ease when both are at full power and it climbs quite nicely on one. It even glides passably well even with the props wind milling as the brake is not on.

Now I have to finish the painting.

The night version of the O-2 appeared to have a 'stencilled' USAF star in one colour - red.
This is the best detail I have found.

I have no idea if this will work but I am going to try and make a stencil.

Terribly fiddly to cut out. The one for the fuselage will be even smaller.

Perhaps it would be easier just to by some normal USAF decals!

My first experiment with the stencil using red emulsion and a stiff brush on a grey Depron test piece.

I was not entirely happy with both the quality of the finish and the fact that once applied it would be almost impossible to remove from the black emulsion paint on the plane.
So I reverted to using the stencil but with a red spray paint on sticky backed plastic.

Of course the paint would dissolve the Depron if it were applied directly!
Still not ideal as both the plastic and the paint have a much higher gloss finish than the rest of the plane but I will live with for now..

The wing underside decal.

Slightly better this time. I might redo the top one.

Made a start on the windows - decided pale grey looked best - with the paper cut out as a guide.

The extra low down windows are only on the other (pilots) side.
A few more bits of red, mainly prop warnings, to do.
Then that smaller 'star and bar' mask for the fuselage, and finally the wing struts.
Hopefully the current Arctic weather (in 3 weeks the days start getting shorter again ) will be annoying somewhere like Norway by then!

This really was fiddly to cut out!
The smaller fuselage stencil.

At this size it seemed sensible to make the stencil support links just a bit wider.

Very nice this morning so here's a video of its second flight.

Still unfinished (no wing struts ) so 'safe' flying and nothing too dramatic.
I edited out most of the bits where it was just gliding but nevertheless for a scale power model it does a pretty good impression of a powered glider.

The fuselage Star is done.

I have just realised it is not on quite straight!
I would have done more 'decorating' but it was absolutely still this morning, touch of drizzle but nevertheless still.
So the Cessna went for 'loitering' flight using 'just the one' with the HK altimeter on board.
I wanted to check its visibility at height so I let it gently continue climbing. Black against a completely overcast sky is actually very good indeed. I could have gone quite a bit higher but the cloud base looked quite low..

It was definitely not at the LVC but the drizzle had turned to light rain. The DX6i and I were getting rather wet so I called a halt.
Nearly 29 minutes is not bad.

Thank you Eric
It is actually very useful as I was not sure how the cooling air exited from the front engine. Conveniently there was a nice close up of the adjustable flap that surrounds each exhaust pipe.
Unfortunately it is detail that is not easy to model on a belly lander!

Now more or less complete with prop warnings and the wing struts fitted.

The wing struts are structural (glued to the wing spar and fuselage former) but are weak enough to simply snap off if they snag on something during landing.
If the wind is light enough I might take it and the Natter to the Bury scale fly in.