Scale Wendell Hostetler 30% Piper Cherokee Glass Fuselage Build.

[TonyHallo]

Hinge install. This is a slow process. One side of the top half was cut apart on the cut line, need to remove 1/8" of material for the hinge. Tape strips were installed on the top half and mold to act as witness marks. The parts were returned to the mold and taped into position to check the gap for the hinge, after a few sanding sessions the gap was good. A strip of packing tape was applied on the mold at the cut line for release. With the top half taped into position on the witness marks, the first side of piano hinge was glues into position and weighted while the epoxy cured., then the opposite side was done in the same manner. When the second side cured, a Dremel with a round nose cylindrical burr was used to open up the tiny holes on the Dubro heavy duty hinges, the holes were ground until black dust came out, this was followed by 80 grit sanding to remove the burrs and promote adhesion. A semi-stiff mixture of epoxy and milled fiberglass was spread into the holes and along the back side of leaves. strip of carbon fiber was pressed into the mixture and wet out on the top side with straight epoxy. The complete process took the entire day using fast hardener.
The Dubro heavy duty hinges are perfect for this, the knuckle is just shy of 1/8" and the leaves are .046" thick, this leaves 1/32" sticking from the leave to the to of the knuckle. The top half of the cowl is three 5.7 of carbon fiber about 1/32" thick.
On to the second side.

 

[WMcNabb]

Very nice!

 

[Snoopy1]

Nicely done.

 

[dhal22]

Oh my………

 

[TonyHallo]

Mounted the cowl on a piece of 1/4"lauan plywood. Need to make 4 latches.

 

[TonyHallo]

The latches are made from 1/32"aluminum sheet. The full scale uses an over center mechanism to cinch down the top and the mechanism is retained at the bottom with a Dzus wing style fastener. These are simply held closed with the bottom button head screw, a little paint and 15 feet, they will look good.

 

[dhal22]

Nice!

 

[TonyHallo]

Cleaning some loose ends on the build. There are five controls located on the front of the plane and the redundancy bus is located under the rear seat. Three of the controls are intermittent, starter, choke, and nose wheel (I plan to disable the nosewheel with varo function built into the redundancy bus), two are in constant use, throttle and IBEC. There is also a connection for the engine telemetry device. Rather than run six separate 3 wire strings decided make a terminal strip for these devices. Ordered 6 conductor 22 gage ribbon cable that lays flat on the floor,had originally planned to use this for the six 3 wire strings, this is held in with small blobs of hot glue. This will hide nicely under the floor trim whatever it happens to be.

The terminal was made from circuit board and pin connectors. Power and ground is feed on each side of the board power and ground buss by two 22 gage wire pairs and six wires are used for the servo signals and the smart port connection. With this using 10 wires rather than 18. Once all wires are plugged in, Kevlar fishing line will be used between the wires and under the board to positively retain the,.

 

[TonyHallo]

Started with some interior details, decided to use matte Apple Red vinyl for the the sides. The rear seat base is also covered with the vinyl. The seat bottoms are glued to the base and the base is held in place with two tabs in the back and two 12 mm diameter magnets up front. Once the red vinyl is applied to the rear bulkhead, the seat backs will get glued in. From the bottom of the windows up will get painted white with the exterior. The trim angle is styrene painted silver.

 

[dhal22]

I was going to ask about the trim angle before I finished ready your post………..