The "swept wing" Sea Hawk rebuild

The starting point after a significant crash.
 
After some thought I decided that rather than a simple complete replacement there was some benefit, although quite involved, in reusing the undamaged parts of the airframe.
Tidied up they consist of the complete left wing, the outer portion of the right wing and the rear fuselage and tail plane. The aileron and elevator servos all survived the crash undamaged.
 
The original  was constructed as a centre fuselage section "half shell" and the complete duct and EDF "let in".to the formers
 
The other half of the fuselage was then be built on.
None of centre fuselage section survived the crash so it and the nose section will have to be true "new" builds.
First new the inlet and exhaust ducts are printed and glued to the EDF. In the original the ducts were printed in PLA. The replacement will use LW-PLA with some normal PLA stiffening. .
The new complete duct.
 
Next to cut the new fuselage formers from 5mm foam sheet.
To be continued.
.    

I have decided to build the fuselage centre and nose as one piece.
First the "stack" of formers.
 
The plan elevation of the fuselage.
 
The build will go from the nose as far as the red line where the "salvaged" tail takes over.
Now not far away from the planking.

Some actual progress. The formers all in place.
 
After the evening meal I will start planking. Slow and steady it is not too difficult.
Once the half shell is complete by far the trickiest job is cutting the formers to allow the complete duct and EDF to be "submerged" exactly halfway in with each formers fully supporting the duct.

As it was too windy I concentrated on planking the half of the fuselage.
 
As I have to "let in" the complete duct this is as far as the planking can go at this stage. The half shell is just about rigid enough to handle.
From now on the emphasis will be very carefully cutting out the three mid position formers to exactly match half the width of the complex duct shape. 

 

The duct goes in to the half fuselage shell.
 
Next the other side formers are added.
 
Then there is some more planking.
The last tricky job is building the the wing roots that enclose the duct inlets. The wing roots still using the same foam carry all the wing loads so they have to be constructed accurately. Only then can the fuselage planking be fully completed.

Taking a break from fiddly planking the left wing repair "before and after".
 
Left and right together now look like this.
 
So far so good but still some way to go.

 

Slowly making a bit of progress.
The repaired wings go on to the part completed fuselage.
 
Much of the underside planking is omitted so the elevator servo wire can be run through to the cockpit to allow the "salvaged" tail assembly to be glued on. This will be the next job.
Only then can the planking be completed but that will still leave the all the "electrics" to be installed and the canopy refitted in the cockpit area.
It better fly nicely after all this effort! 

A bit more progress - the tail is now on.
 
There are still a couple of planks t do but they are the "closing" ones so require careful fitting all the way round.
Then it will be lots of sanding and filling!
I have given the tail plane a bit of negative incidence as it looked like it was if anything a touch positive.
Started thinking about the cockpit layout and restoring the original canopy.
I have at least printed a new nosecone.

Looking round there is only one "damaged" plane that need restoring.
 
The hand launch/belly land Depron Ballerina which in Dec 24 ended up looking like this. 
 
It was originally built with U/C for the 2016 RCM&E mass build.
 

At last the final plank goes on along with the windscreen & canopy.
 
Next its just filling and sanding.
Then the electrics and finally the painting. 

This has taken as long to fix as any of my repairs but it is now done.
 
Well almost as it need a light spray of clear acrylic to give the very matt paint a bit of a sheen. It also greatly increases the paints "scratch" resistance.

The blue top colour is not the right, it should be dark sea grey, but that is not a colour done in match pots and is very dark - almost black.
The colour I have used is "Admiral". Really a bit too blue for scale but it looks OK.

Incidentally it is "bathroom washable" type so should stand a bit of getting wet.  

Flying in the rain?
You never know but belly landing in my fields long grass after it has rained can get it seriously wet!