Tiger Moth

At this point I discovered the pics for Glow or Electric, on the last page!


Still a lot of intuition required though.

Only the first 3 formers can be glued vertical, as you can see from the above none of the other formers are vertical. I took the angle from the side panel then glued the former at the correct position.

All of the formers now glued in position.
You can now also glue in A19 and A35 braces, with the additional P4 and P3 on top of them if you are going glow.
When dry we are going to trial fit the fuselage sides.

Now time to glue in A14, it should firm up the nose section so we can glue on the fuselage sides.


I'm a bit concerned about the position of A14, it would appear to be right where I want to put the fuel tank!

All those severely cut away formers does suggest to me that it will have limited 'major' crash resistance. Lots of little bits?

Like lots of ARTF's - big thump = bag of matchsticks! :evil:

Not a great deal of strength the Simon, I'm hoping things will improve later.
Well even after installing A14 I still wasn't happy with the rigidity so I decided to put in the rest of the nose pieces.


Which threw up a problem, the cut out for A22 where it goes into A1 is too short! I've had to cut back A22 to make it fit, the right way to do it would be to cut the slot in the second A1 a bit deeper, too late now. Watch out for A26, there are 8 of them (4 each side) they are different lengths, the shortest at the front. Glue them into A27, then glue in A27 which also has the same problem as A22

Now glue in A32 which has the same length problem as A22 and A27





Now dry I feel the nose section is rigid enough to support the fuselage sides, but first butt glue the side extension pieces A18 to the sides A36.


The sides are cut out of 2 different sheets of crumble wood, I also found the thicknesses differed, 1.9mm and 2.04mm. I started to glue the thick A18 to the thin A36 which gave a noticeable step, luckily the glue hadn't set.
The fits are so tight that I wouldn't recommend dry fitting more than twice!
Once fitted you can final fit the sides and glue back to former A7. While still wet check that the tail ends of the sides meet without any vertical disparity.

There is some curve to the forward cheeks of the fuselage, always difficult to clamp so I use electrical tape, the stretchy stuff, because it has a memory it is perfect for pulling around curves.


Once dry you can apply glue and pull in the tail section.

For those interested here are some very nice kits. I have the Toni Clark Practical Scale 72" partly built.They are lovely kits of different sizes. www.google.co.uk/search?q=practical+scal...ceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8

At this point I decided to check a few things, lets face it, it's so easy to paint yourself into a corner! Ever mindful that a receiver, battery and servos have to be fitted, I looked at fitting the servos.


Are 9 gram servos going to cut the mustard? And secondly the pics show the output arm very close to the former, which I think might limit the rotation. Comments please.

Your going to have to slot the hole in the former where the pushrods gos through to allow the servo are to rotate

Are those servos man enough - I doubt it. I use them as sacrificial servos for steerable nose-legs, and often break the gears.
They seem ok on small foamies, but in a crumble-wood model - - - -
As said by BB, you need to slot the former, to allow the pushrods to slide sideways as the servo arm rotates. As the rod-hole is so near the servo arm, you will have to use a Z bend at that end. There will be no room for a clevis and screw-adjuster.

I have used the same servos but only in small gliders. They are good to use with decent centring but I would have thought a bit light for your use. I would use some similar sized metal geared ones

On a full size Tiger Moth the elevators rest on their bottom stop with no one holding the stick.
If you can get the linkage/hinges as free moving as that then even a humble 9g servo (1.5kgcm) is plenty man enough although the rudder servo will likely need metal gears to safely handle the tail skid shocks.
Just my view.

As you can see the sides are not on so I've been chewing on this problem for some time. The servo in the foreground is fitted as recommended. The servo in the background is fitted reversed and has much more clearance to the bulk head.


See fig 1.2

The carrier tube for the push rod is 3mm id and the rod itself is 1.5mm so there's a certain amount of 'wiggle' room for rod radial movement. Now I understand why Tim changed the system to 'pull pull'