Dumas Lysander

While waiting for the glue to dry I thought I'd post some comments.
First off, the box opens at the end. This may seem trivial but it means you don't have a tray to hold all the bits while you're working & in repacking them into the box has to be done carefully so as not to damage the tissue or the balsa strip.
On the plus side there are three good-sized sheets of tissue, black, green & light tan. 

The laser-cut sheet balsa parts show quite a bit of scorching, especially on the reverse side, much more so than the VMC triplane i built.
The bridging tabs to hold the parts in the sheet are quite minimal, most parts have only two - but they have held the parts (apart from the bottom keel which had been sellotaped in) which I suppose is all they need to do & it minimizes cutting them out.
 
 

The plans are clear & on quite a large sheet (The instructions are mainly on separate sheets).
I've photo-copied onto A4 sheets the parts needed to build on. Why don't the manufacturers do this? People might not have the luxury of a copier or a building board to take the whole drawing. Its negligible cost.

 
I had a bitch earlier about the difficulties of building a fuselage so here is a photo of the half-built one.
Super-Phatic is meant to "wick" into the parts. Does the laser scorching affect the porosity of the parts?
At the tail-end of the two keels the plan shows a gap where the side keels slots into. The first side-keel inevitable goes full depth into the gap so the second one won't be symmetrical. I wonder whether to cut along the sides so as to make them the same.
 

i have had some of their model kits that are nice and some that are burnt like that. weird.
i usually lightly sand the burnt edges. i sanded because in the past i had the burnt edges show through the finished tissue. but sanding it off probably helps the gluing as well.

i have ordered that plane but i won't get it for a few weeks. i don't know about the tail question that you have asked. sorry.
maybe take a picture of that section of the plan.
OU

Finishing off the fuselage this morning I have made a discovery.
The gap between the top & bottom keels at the tail end is for the stabiliser to slot into not as I assumed for the side keels, so this gap has to be kept open until the stabiliser is fitted which would be after covering with tissue.
This is not highlighted in the instructions. There is one label for the position of the stabiliser on the side view of the fuselage which unfortunately is cut off on the A4 copy I have been refering to so I'd missed it. There is a short stringer shown immediately above the stabiliser which has the effect of concealing it.
I've now opened it up & after a bit of filing will be able to slide the stabiliser in. Meanwhile I'll put a keeper in to maintain it.

Looking at the moulded clear plastic canopy I'm not sure where the cut line is. As the wings are held on by two dowels through this canopy its quite critical to get this right as the wing rigidity & alignments depend on it.
The dowels rest on a horizontal former in the fuselage & in the corners with two vertical formers. With the canopy on this won't be reachable for glueing.
The instructions say to cement the canopy to the fuselage then cut the holes for the dowels & cement them in place.
 

A dowel & the canopy.


 

if this is the correct model maybe there are some images within the thread on this site that may help.
the third link shows the best image from dumas.
www.virtualaerodrome.com/image_thread.ht...ser_id=570&offset=40

virtualaerodrome.com/image_detail.html?p..._id=16788&offset=292

 

 

sorry try tis one

www.dumasproducts.com/?product=lysander-kit-220

i deleted . i was wrong

here is a video