Jet'n in Texas

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02/06/2011 -- Haven't gotten to the beginning task of the build yet, but studying the instruction manual, looking at the parts provided and deciding among various. options.
One decision involves whether or not I want to do gear doors. the added complexity, and the potential for air leaks, or having to land with fouled gear because something didn't work right has me leaning towards keeping it simple. My spark makes a whistling sound due to its open wheel bays and I kinda like it. So, I am leaning on mechanically using a door for the oleo, but forgoing the wheel cover. This is not final yet, please comment if you have a strong opinion one way or the other, I could be swayed.
Here are some pictures of kit parts and the undercarriage.

This is a tray of hardware showing some bits and pieces that came with the kit. Note the fiberglass horns, high quality ball links, clevis's, door brackets, hinges, etc. The little red tool is a wedge to separate the wing when breaking the model down. The wing snaps together using white nylon pegs that fit into a female receptical to securely hold the wing.

Nose Gear. Interesting, the manual shows a directly driven steering coupling base on a spigot mounted on the servo the steering arm drops into the U shaped cup in the spigot (for lack of a better way to describe it) The direct drive steering is only engaged when the gear is down and the spring centering wire keeps it straight when retracting. This is probably a common method, but to me its new and seems to be a elegant method.

Wheel and brakes. These wheels are great, the photo doesn't do them justice, but they use ball bearings, and are pretty wide so they shouldn't have problems in a grass field. The brakes look nice, and the retracts are really tough


I plan to start the initial tasks now, fitting the hatch for the fan area and the cockpit.
will be checking back when I get something done.

The small semicircular tabs are a perfect fit, just stick in the slots provided. I waited until I cut the slots for these tabs in the fueslage just give me a little bit of flexibilty

Be very careful not to loose one of these before you get them glued into place, I lost one at least three times. (found it each time)

Now all the slots are cut! I taped the rails, and then laid the hatch in place, and lined it up so that although it was held off by the tabs, I was able to take a pencil and make a center mark, and a line to indicate where the tab fit.
Then I took a dremel, scored a line. then an exacto saw cut it through, then I tool an exacto flat file, and worked the slotted open to the correct size using one of the semi circular tabs as a gauge, once it would fit flush, then I was ready to move on to the next one. I put a sheet of plastic on the hole to catch the dust and debris from cutting and fileing.

Tape off, ready to check the fit

hmmm. it seems to fit real nice, hope I do as well when I add the rear locating tab.

Back in its resting place until I can do some more work on it.

RE