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Chipmunk Diary - March 2011

I would normallly start covering a fuselage at the bottom and work my way up. However, it seemed better to overlap the blue onto the white rather than the other way around. This meant that the blue side pieces had to be trimmed to shape before applying them so I covered the wing fairings first so that I knew just how much the blue side pieces had to cover.

Wingtips are from red film but the red stripe is vinyl and the blue triangle from blue trim.

The anti glare panel is from matt black vinyl. I covered the area in white film first because I was worried about how well the vinyl would stick to balsa. However, this may have been a mistake - the black absorbs the heat an is causing the film underneath to bubble a bit and, because one can't apply heat to the vinyl, there is no way of shrinking the film down again.

This picture shows where the battery ended up. Remember that it was back towards the rear of the cockpit before! I'm still not sure how this came about - I can't believe that the GiantCod covering is particularly heavy but can't think of anything other than the covering that can have shifted the balance since the earlier check.

The nice thing about putting the model together for taxi trials is that all of the mistakes and wrinkles that were so annoying during the covering stage are at last put into perspective when one takes in the overall impression of the model - even that spinner shape doesn't jar so much now!

All the airborne pictures from the maiden flight are on the main diary page, so there's just one of me saying final prayers before take off and one of the model taxiing back afterwards. Everything held together well - including the sticky tape retaining the hatch!

The video from the Chipmunk's second flight showed that there was no movement in the oleos so I ordered some lighter springs.


This picture shows the two original springs at their uncompressed length of 2in


Here the left had spring has been replaced by the lighter one and compressed by about 25%, without the right hand one moving.

Even with the lighter springs, the oleos still weren't working so now I have cleaned off the thick grease they were supplied with and lubricated the O rings with Teflon grease. They now move freely and recoil much faster so it's possible that they may turn out to be too bouncy now!

The air scoops are simple balsa blocks, film covered, and attached with double sided tape. The fairings on the oleos were also made from balsa and attached with double sided tape. A small block of white foam was slid over the leg before fitting the oleos. The idea is that this should take up the movement of the torque rods. We shall see.

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