1200mm Dragonfly

All four packages from different retailers came at once this morning - so the finger definitely points at Royal Mail.

While I was ordering the neccesary bits on ebay I saw a Tap Wrench & 5 taps for £3 so I ordered it (after all it was cheaper than a pint) & I may well snap the M3 one cleaning the tapped holes done on the printer in PLA. The wrench looks OK but the three smaller taps are too small for it.

 

The fabric arrived & I've covered the model. The fabric was much easier to manage than the Kavan film.
One of the fabrics was silver & looked like silver but when I brushed the cellulose dope on it took all the colour out with the result it was almost white so the silver bits I'd printed stood out like sore thumbs so I reprinted them in white.
The blue heatshrink I used for the undercarriage is the wrong blue so I've ordered some white.

I've printed the wheel hubs & collets in white as well & the cheap taps are OK apart from the wrench is too big for the 3mm tap so I had to use a pin-chuck. Its not worth complaing for £3.

I redid the windows & while I had the gold PLA on the machine I printed out a set of cowl & spinners.

To finish it off I just need to fit the control horns, receiver & gyro.
   

 

That looks very neat. Well done!
My only comment is the convention for a V tail is to have the included angle between them to be about 90 degrees to give sufficient effective side area to ensure directional stability.
I note the Dragonfly has quite a long nose which adds side area ahead of the CG so countering the effectiveness of the side area behind it.
A full size glider V tail
 

The area of the tail & the angle is according to the calculations in the article I posted earlier. Otherwise from my point of view they would just be a guess.
I may give it a nose job at some time in the future.

I intend to run the motor with my nose pieces on my test rig as I am concerned that they may cause problems.
 

I haven't put the arm on the servo or the link to the ailerons & I can alter the settings in the transmitter.
I've got the gyro but I'll have to read up on using it with a V-tail.

I spent yesterday morning trying to get it in a flying condition so as to take it up to the field but I couldn't get the gyro set up & ran out of time. It turned out it was a simple wiring mistake but when the penny dropped I still had to winkle the receiver & gyro into the model & balance it for the CG.
Now its a question of waiting for some suitable weather. Yesterday was forecast for 1 or 2mph, the Met recorded 9mph at our nearest weather station which is across at Newcastle at 146m. The flying field is probably at 300m & exposed.

There is a setting for V-tails on the gyro, the transmitter is just set up as for a conventional tail. It can also be set for normal, balanced or hover on a transmitter channel. I don't know what hover does for a fixed wing plane so I've put it on a 2-way switch on the transmitter to switch the gyro off or on.

I thought that because I couldn't understand how they did it (or why they would want to) when I saw it on you tube.

If a "V" tail (or any other) setting is made on the gyro itself it means it is expecting normal signals the transmitter. The necessary mixing is done inside the gyro unit. 
If the transmitter actually sends a special "combined" signal for separate servos the gyro will get very confused as to what to do!