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… Continue Reading →

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… Continue Reading →

This was one of those evenings that you skirt around for ages and in the end think … well “No one else is going to do it for you” ! So I took the big 1.8m roll of Oratex out of its protective covering and unrolled it over the prepared underside of the Top Port… Continue Reading →

I have been a little quiet on the blog front but like all swans .. frantically peddling away under the surface !! Having now completed 3 surfaces of Oratex (rudder both sides and one lower elevator covering) I think I am finally getting the hang of things … It may mean a week offline in… Continue Reading →

Not a section I was looking forward to .. the finish sounds so final 🙂 …. it’s also the only bit everyone will actually see … so all that underlying hard work gets covered … The patches were fine but it does take a bit of getting used to … getting that multi internal wrap… Continue Reading →

Having read the Oratex manual loads of times and watched the very useful You Tube bits I made my first venture into covering … Started with preparing a strip for covering over the joints ahead of the top covering. This will prevent fretting later. First use of the HotMelt glue which seems to go on… Continue Reading →

I was planning on doing an Out of Africa lookalike but unfortunately Oratex don’t do Black ! So I asked them last week for some samples of Cub Yellow and Olive Drab (closest to Black). Looks OK I think …. very traditional Olive colour … So plan with be top decking Olive, Top cowl Olive… Continue Reading →

Just checked and its over 8 years ago when I first glued the fin and turtle deck covering on… not an easy task as it was 1 long piece per side. My old post shows the details and (quite handily) the exact temperatures I used at the time. I wasn’t expecting to undo it …… Continue Reading →

It’s always good to get the annual test done and dusted but it’s also a time where things might crop up .. it might be recent or it might not … A few things came up and one particular one was a bit of a pain .. A while back I wanted to fit a… Continue Reading →