 1 Saturday, 23 May, 2014 The life and death of the Centurion |
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 3 09 September, 2017 The trailing edge of the left wing came away from the foam and I ignored the problem. It wasn't long before tiny bits of fuel got in under the balsa and melted the foam |
 4 Early 2017 Oh, Oh! Looks like a major repair coming up. I had no option but to cut away the soggy sheet and the melted foam. |
 5 Early 2017 I fitted a spar and cut a notch in it exactly 1/16" deep, flush with the wing. |
 6 Early 2017 I added little triangular pieces to simulate rib spars. |
 7 Early 2017 Not content with damaging the wing, I walked the plane into the bench and damaged the fin. I effected a permanent repair with a strip of sticky tape. |
 8 Early 2017 I glued everything into place with slow-set cyano. So far so good. |
 9 Early 2017 The 1/16" balsa strip fitted nicely over the riblets. |
 10 Early 2017 After sanding everything flush, I glued fibre glass over the repair. |
 11 Early 2017 To glue the glass down, I used thinned Z Poxy finishing resin - wiped clean with paper towels. |
 12 Early 2017 This bit was nasty. I had to be careful not to get too enthusiastic and ruin the fuselage. |
 13 Early 2017 While I was at it, I decided to repair some dents that I'd inflicted on the turtle deck. |
 14 Early 2017 Now a bit of lacquer undercoat from a spray can. |
 15 Early 2017 Also some lacquer undercoat for the turtle deck. |
 16 Early 2017 It takes a few days for this kind of undercoat to go hard enough to sand most of it away. I used 800 grit applied wet. |
 17 Early 2017 Also, I used a balsa block so that it would sand flat, hence the highs and lows. |
 18 Early 2017 The white base coat is on. The repair has completely disappeared by now. |
 19 Early 2017 However, I now have some serious work to recut another checker-board mask to the exact shape.. |
 20 Early 2017 The undercoat on the turtle deck has been sanded flat with wet 800. |
 21 Early 2017 The red is actually Mazda Velocity Red. It's a three part finish: red undercoat, metallic red (sort of a candy colour that has a lot of clear in it), topped off with 2K clear. |
 22 Early 2017 The red undercoat is sprayed on the bits to be painted Velocity Red. There is a bit of overspray on the white plastic checkerboard mask; these are the bits that are to remain white. |
 23 Early 2017 The Mazda Velocity Red has been sprayed on the checkerboard and the masking has been removed. Same with the turtle deck. |
 24 Early 2017 At this stage, it looks encouraging. |
 25 Early 2017 All that remains is to spray the Mazda Champagne Silver |
 26 Early 2017 All done. A coat of clear finishes it off. |
 27 Early 2017 And it's good as new. This picture was taken in March 2017 at an F2B competition at Luddenham, NSW. I flew reasonably well in the first round. I was second-last away in the second round by which time the rain clouds had come and the wind was fierce; I got blown out of the sky. I hated it. On the way home, feeling all bitter and twisted, I said to myself, "Now I know why I don't fly in competitions any more. That was absolute crap." I felt better after I got home and kicked the dog. |
 28 29 August 2020 I'm definitely losing it; once again I crashed because I was careless. A line broke, but lines don't just break; they wear out and need to be replaced and this I didn't do. It was my only tuned-pipe aeroplane and was thoroughly sorted. |
 29 29 August 2020 When a foam-wing plane crashes, it is usually finito and this plane was beyond repair; most of it finished up in the garbage. This is the second plane I have crashed this year because of carelessness. Return to the home page |
