Scale Wendell Hostetler 30% Piper Cherokee Glass Fuselage Build.

[TonyHallo]

Doing a little work inside the fuselage interior. Needed to finish off the side walls. Looked at a couple different options;
1. Laminating .015 styrene on 1/16" balsa
2. Fiberglass lay ups of various thicknesses
3. Laminating fiberglass on 1/16 balsa
After several tests ended up with 1/2 and 1 1/2 ounce glass cloth wetted out and the excess squeegeed off, then vacuum bagging 1/16" balsa sheet to the back. Selected the lightest 1/16" sheets from a stack purchased from National balsa, these sheets weighted 12 - 13 grams, this works out to 7 pound balsa. The sheets ranged from 12 to 22 grams each, 7 to 12 pound balsa. After doing the calculations I found it interesting that there are exactly 256 3"x36"x1/16" sheets in a cubic foot!
Next move will be the shelf for the rear seats. Since this need to be a little stiffer 4 ounce cloth was laminated to the back side of same sheets used for the sides.

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[TonyHallo]

I bought a dozen or so 12" x 24" x .015" white styrene sheets for the project, I did find the sheets make an excellent template material, cheap, score with a knife, bendable, just perfect.

 

[TonyHallo]

Got the rear seats mocked up, the seat bottom plate will be removable. Set the dash in place, again this will be removable to access the servos for the throttle

, choke and nose wheel.

 

[WMcNabb]

Looks good!!

 

[TonyHallo]

Found this 3/4" red panel indicating lamp from Square D that I plan to use for the red anti collision beacon. Eliminated most of the assembly.
Up until this point been making power supplies for the LED's from LM317 regulators, kind of a pain. Found the adjustable regulators (Left side) on Amazon 6 for about $10, they looked ;ike they would word out then decided to look for a fixed voltage unit. Found switching regulator (Right side) at Digikey, up to 35 volt input, 3.3 volt output rated at 1 1/2 amps, weights 2 grams, all four needed will weight less that one of the Amazon units or the home built.

 

[AKNick]

Back when I made a fading beacon it was running off a 12V lipo with a 555 timer, NPN transistor, 220 Capacitor, and Resistors to step down the voltage. Your approach would create a more stable voltage

 

[TonyHallo]

The timer will be a logic switch in OpenTx, the off and on times are adjustable. I had the 3 watt red LED power up yesterday working great, hurts your eyes, then it quit. It was powered from a 2200 ma 2 cell lipo. After some voltage checks discovered the voltage was down to 3. 8 volts. Went out to the aircraft carrier and brought in a battery that was about 8 volts, plugged in in and could not turn the light off. After another hour of testing discovered that the PW switches I bought on Ebay were 3-5 volt rated. Dug an old Max Products regulator out and reduced the voltage to 5 1/2 volts and everything works. Ordered different switches rated at up to 37 volts, a lot of messing around but having fun at it.

 

[AKNick]

I was way more primitive. Had a micro servo on a cam system to the receiver on a three position switch utilizing two micro switches. EG: POS 1 off, POS 2 strobes/nav/beacon ON, POS 3 Landing light wig wags in addition to POS 2. Was quite fun to create and make this system. I made two of them until I started to put it into a CAD PCB file... really a different world when it comes to electrical engineering... kinda lost interest and time.
Here's my old FunCub with my V1 system 12 years ago

 

[TonyHallo]

Have the front seat mounting worked out. The supports are 1/4" lite ply plates with the majority of the center removed, the plates are jointed near the bottom with 2 - 1/4" dowels. Ordered the clips shown to affix the seats in position and allow for easy removal.

Have the LED mounting worked out and the housing installed, need to do some bodywork to blend it in. Started working on the white rudder mounted position light, using a 10 mm white 1/2 watt LED with a white colored lense for this.
Thinking I might cover the walls with a gray colored fabric and use 1/4" angle for the trim pieces. The trim for the rear seat platform is over 12" long, requested a quote for special cut piece from K&S, the price wasn't bad, the minimum order quantity was, came out about $125, not sure what my breakpoint was but it was way over, think I might have gone $50.