Oratex is amazingly strong and opaque ! Once you have an overlapped joint – re finding a pre drilled rigging hole involves some very bright lights to see if you can see through the covering to re find the holes. Then a nice hot soldering iron through and bingo …

 

Also get the wires properly labelled with the RS coding method

A few unusual shots as I was under the ‘plane checking transport after the static show

 

Sherwood out on show and answered about 1 million questions as the interest levels rise !

 

Out of the barn and connect up the trailer .. took around 4 hours to rig from scratch ie all wings, tail, elevator, rudder etc

 

The Arrows arrive …

 

 

Andrew (Koester) very kindly popped around again to assist … he had won one of the charity raffle prizes to spend 1 hour ‘plane building !

He is now over 6 hours into his 1 hour prize !! Well done and much appreciated Andrew ..Having learned the art of gluing and fitting reenforcing Oratex strips we moved onto that 3 handed job of fitting and drilling the perspex windscreen fittings.

 

The first hole was drilled without a support alloy strip behind .. but ran the risk of the drill going through the body and then whizzing through the perspex and marking the inside of the cockpit coving … Andrew ‘back filled’ and we drilled all 22 holes (11 front, 11 rear).

With so much swarf around my nice clean screens we elected to cleco as we went, remove everything once drilled , blow it all clean and then re-fit.

Full on weekend ahead of the Jersey Air Display this week (in the static display – flying next year 🙂

Lots and lots of covering bits including the first AND THE MOST AWKWARD piece … the dreaded bottom of the fin curve to the longerons / turtle deck !

 

Roll out the material across the top of the tail end and loosely clamp to give some basic form

Now start to pull the shape and bring clamps more into play …. I noticed that the tail end of one of the stringers was protruding and making a noticeable point in the material… so took around 20 mm off the end and curved more.

 

Decided to start ironing from the lower centre forwards and rearwards .. small iron set at 150 (as metal bars) Trying to get as tight as I could on the first pull.

The complex nature of that lovely curve from fin leading edge to the top of the body is frightening to try to get the material to follow. Even just offering up the material is ‘fighting’ to stay straight !

 

Slit to follow the strake lines BUT make sure the hotmelt glue is on all the parts that you might wish to secure it to ! Once the se cuts go in the whole thing starts to ‘behave’ and follow the lines .. but don’t cut too much as it will affect the relatively narrow surface area it grips to.

 

I have learned that having an initial run through with the heat gun around 130 starts to take up the slack gradually .. rather than just blasting through on 150+. Also, my very good friend and fellow builder Danny (Baker) kindly advised me on cut patterns for the body and care on this curve .. too much rapid shrinkage could distort the underlying framework

The bit securing to the fibreglass decking was easier than I thought .. again complex curves and adverse cambers but it looks neat once done.

Returning to a previous awkward ripple once cooled a bit brings much more control to the phased tightening and even look ensues !

 

Second run through and have had to crank up from 130 to 150 to encourage that latter (now small) ripples to flatten out in a curved way !

Very pleased (and HUGELY relieved) at the result !

The ‘other’ side should be somewhat easier as its simply overlapping .. already templates based on this first side (reverse image !)

Aim was to cover one piece in Cub Yellow on top deck and then paint it green .. but I kinda like the two-tone look at the moment !