Working

Well I originally meant to update this more than once a month...

After finishing the Gentle Lady I started working on the Mini Bird of Time again. I finished the inner panels of both wings and started on the outer panels.

There's a wing in there somewhere.

Epoxy and microballoons and balsa around the brass joiner.

Epoxy curing.

Both panels together with the joiner in place.

Luckily I decided to lay all of the parts out before I started to glue things together and found out that I was missing some pieces. I read through the instructions closely and figured out that I'm also missing some fuselage parts. I have contacted the kit manufacture and new parts are being cut. There is no eta and it was like pulling teeth to get any response from the manufacture.

I have noticed that RC related businesses have terrible customer service. I was going to purchase a kit from skybench and after two months of e-mails and phone calls gave up. I guess a two minute phone call or a quick update e-mail is too much to ask for.

I decided to start the Bird of Time while I wait for the Mini Bird of Time parts. I will probably finish the BOT before resuming the MBOT as I am really looking forward to flying it. I don't have pictures for most of the work I have done so far but I do have a couple of the wing.

Rib positions marked on the bottom sheeting.

Using bb's as weight to glue the spar on the sheeting.

I decided to install spoilers on this plane. I haven't installed spoilers so I am making it up as I go. We will see if I end up with something that works or have to remake the inner panels.

Spoiler slots cut in ribs.

Pictures *cough* FINISHED!

Ok so I kinda dropped the ball when it came to posting pictures. Clearly tonight or tomorrow means next month....

Anyway I finished the plane and had some great flights last Sunday. I had a lot of fun putting this together and learned quit a bit that I can use on future builds.

Right inner panel.

Holding the polyhedral joint together while glue dries. This is the left side.

While waiting for glue to dry on wing panels I worked on the fuse. I didn't take any pictures of the fuse during construction.

I glued my finger to the fuse! Err look MAGIC!

 In order to make the wing a little stronger I added a top spar to tie the sheeting in a little better. This design wasn't made to take winch launches so I am worried about the overall strength of the wing.

Holding down the top spar while glue dries.

 I was a little upset with the super sloppy fit of the spars to ribs. This will make the wing much weaker than a nice tight fit and this design isn't super strong to begin with. I had to cut small fillers out of scrap balsa and glue in the gaps. I think I spent as much time on this as I did assembling the structure of the wing.

Gaps around spars :(

Woo Hoo! The wing and fuse are finished! Well not quite I have to test fit everything before covering.

Starting to look like a plane!

Obligatory couch shot.

Time to cover! I decided to go with Cub Yellow as I'm not super proud of the wing and don't want to show the inner off. The fuse is going to be black. I took my time with the covering and still ended up with a very wavy rudder and horizontal stabilizer. I spent around 5 hours on the fuse and 9 hours on the wing. I am pretty happy with how the wing and fuse turned out. I also learned what I did wrong on the rudder so it should turn out better next time.

Starting to cover. I forgot to take a before picture.

Finished. This took around 8-9 hours.

A Monokote monster was murdered here!

Finished! It looks really nice.

Lookin good! I could be a little biased tho.

Overall I learned quite a bit and think my next build should turn out that much better. This plane has completed its purpose and it flies very well. The first flight was dedicated to trim and dive tests to make sure the CG was correct. The second flight was 45 minutes long and my best yet! I had a blast building this and look forward to many hours of relaxing thermalling.

Wings

I decided to make the stock wing since I don't need to design it as I go along. I worked on it a little bit yesterday and got the right side panels finished. Today I will be joining the panels and starting the left side of the wing. I will also be working on the fuselage while waiting on glue to dry. I will post an update with pictures either tonight or tomorrow.

Back to the Lady

I have decided to finish the Gentle Lady before continuing on with the Mini Bird of Time. I really didn't like the stock construction of the GL wing so I decided to change it. Unfortunately I needed to cut new ribs to do this. I think I may build a stock wing as well as the modified version since I won't be using much of the original materials and I don't have anything else to do with them. I am curious to see the difference in weight between the two. I have cut ribs and capped half of the spars with carbon so far.

Old on the left and new on the right.

Waiting for the glue to dry. The spars and carbon are under there.

Inner right wing

Well after working on it all day. Maybe I should put distractedly working on it all day. I have the right inner wing panel to the point where I need to start working on the left wing panel. Everything went together fairly smoothly. I have decided to build this plane 99% stock. The only modification that I'm planning on doing is using two dowels front and rear for the rubber bands instead of one. That isn't going to be for a little while tho. I didn't take many pictures just one starting and one finished. Oh and one of Hercules waiting for supper.

Starting

Finished

"The food is in there!"

Mini Bird of Time

My Mini Bird of Time kit got here today. I am very happy with the quality of this kit. I have two minor issues. First there is no parts sheet so you can't double check and make sure you got everything. Second the plans were folded into quarters then rolled. This caused some odd creases around the folds that were a pain to get out before copying, I actually couldn't get them all out and they showed up on the copy. I understand that they were shipped this way to fit in the box. I am very particular regarding things like this so it probably isn't an issue for anyone else. Just for perspective I didn't like that the Gentle Lady plans were folded and I would be willing to pay extra for plans to be rolled and shipped separately.

Packaging, WOW the box is 1/3 smaller than I was expecting. The parts are nicely stacked and wrapped in plastic bags before going into the box. Extra room in the box is taken up with bubble wrap. Everything got here in excellent condition. Seriously I was amazed when I saw the box.

MBOT box with a Gentle Lady box for comparison. Both planes have a 2M wingspan.

Bubble wrap. I already removed the plans and instructions so it isn't a neat as it once was.

Parts in plastic bags.

Humm the kit says "expert builder/flyer" well I'm neither of those but I am a very mechanical person and I catch on fairly quickly. I guess time will tell but I think this should work out just fine. Either way I will have fun and learn something.

Label with "expert builder/flyer"

Major decision time! Airfoil, I'm going to go with the 11%. I figure if I want the thinner foil later I can get another kit and make an 8% wing and an e-fuse. Wing, I'm going to go with two piece because I can't transport a one piece wing :mad:. I have a pickup but no bed cover. While on topic, how do you keep the rubber bands from slipping in between the wing halves?

I was reading the instructions, :eek: I know instructions, I must be a total noob. I got a kick out of step one considering the "expert builder" bit. "Tape a sheet of wax paper or plastic wrap over the drawing." I could just see someone "I have built 8 planes in the past, but the instructions didn't say anything about protecting the plans!"

Gentle Lady and how I got here

I started flying in March after watching some guys on the local slope. The first plane that I purchased was a Zagi 5C because I wanted to fly slope and I could get it in a kit with a Transmitter. While I was waiting for the Zagi to arrive I visited multiple hobby shops and everyone kept saying something along the lines of "You are going to be hiking all over that hill if you try to teach yourself how to fly on the slope. You should get a Radian and learn how to fly with that. Trying to learn on the slope would be a big mistake." My Dad was with me when visiting one of the shops and decided that I had better listen to the "experts" and I ended up with a Radian.

The first time I flew the Radian didn't go so well. I ended up crashing pretty hard when the wind decided to go from 1-3mph to 15-20mph. The saddle above the wing snapped, chunks were broken off of the root on each wing, one wing had a pretty big crack about 8" out from the root, and the nose was shorter than it had been. I researched how to fix the nose with boiling water and glued the rest together with gorilla glue. While the Radian was airworthy again I was a little hesitant to try flying it again and the Zagi had arrived so why not put it together.

It took me about a week to assemble the Zagi. I decided that I didn't care what the "experts" had to say I was going to go throw this off the hill and see what happened. I went up to the local slope, threw the Zagi off and............ didn't crash! I ended up flying for about 6 hours. After the initial jitters wore off I was able to do some loops and a little inverted flight. I was STOKED! All the way home I kept thinking "Hah the "experts" didn't know what they were talking about. I just needed something with ailerons."

After flying for a month or so I went up to the slope to find almost no wind. "Okay" I thought "This is why I always bring the Radian." While I hadn't flown it since the crash I felt I could handle it better now and I figured out a couple of things that I did wrong the first time around. I assembled the Radian, threw it out, hit the throttle for a short climb, and started making a big zigzag looking for lift. While I didn't see any thermals exactly I gained a ton of altitude, it was like the entire sky was going up. I sat down, relaxed, and let everything go. Nothing mattered but the beautiful day, fresh air, my dog, and the plane. I ended up specking out. MAN what a thrill, I was hooked.

Fast forward to the middle of June. I decided to look up a local glider club because I could use some guidance. If the entire sky isn't going up I'm not either. The school that we fly at doesn't allow motors of any kind so I can't use my Radian.:censored: Okay, the club has a loaner easy glider that I can use while I get something I can use. I'll admit I have a tendency to go a little overboard (okay maybe a lot overboard) at times and RC planes was no exception. I wasn't allowing myself to purchase any RC stuff in June because I had been going overboard the previous months. July first rolls around and I start trying to contact an individual to purchase one of his kits. He has a very good reputation and produces the kit that everyone in my club recommended. After a month with multiple e-mails and phone calls I have not received any communication back. Apparently it is too hard to respond to an e-mail or return a call (he has been on RCGroups). I am disappointed because I was looking forward to this plane. Well now I just lost a month and a half and I really need to build something because this loaner is driving me crazy. I ordered a Mini Bird of Time kit from isthmusmodels.com, sweet I finally have a plane on the way.:)

I was looking around and kept seeing people building the Gentle Lady as their first glider. This got me thinking "Maybe I should build a Gentle Lady and see what I can learn from it. Everything probably isn't going to go together like a Zaerotech kit." As I was going on to my weekend I remembered seeing a GL kit at my LHS. Thursday (my weekend) I picked the kit up and set up my building area. Friday I was able to start building before work.

My first impressions of the kit are that it could be better, it could also be a lot worse, the quality is definitely better than the Dynaflight Bird of Time kit I have. "Laser cut parts" is a stretch for most of the parts, I would call them laser scored for most and laser outlined for others. The cut only goes half way through the material on most of the parts. Luckily the wing ribs are fully cut so I won't be messing those up trying to finish cutting them.

Friday I assembled the horizontal stabilizer without any issues.

Just getting started.

Finished, hey that wasn't so bad!

Saturday I worked on the fin and rudder. I was annoyed when I ran out of material for the diagonal braces with one left to go.:mad: I was even being super careful to not waste any. I was working with the long sticks and had barely any waste. It isn't like I cut a bunch of pieces a half inch longer that needed and had a bunch of scrap. I scrounged around in my BOT kit and found a piece that would work. Let's hope I don't run out on that now too.

The piece I was short.

The finished pieces before sanding.

Sunday I sanded the H stab and shaped the elevator, sanded the fin and rudder, and started to assemble the fuse by gluing the sides together.

One thing that I wasn't expecting as I haven't worked with balsa this light before was how quickly it would sand. I also didn't really think about parts not being quite the same thickness during assembly as I could "always sand everything flat". This may or may not have been a problem other than the rudder training edge was the thickest part and also harder wood. When I sanded everything flat this didn't want to sand down and I ended up reducing the overall thickness by about half.:eek: I may make another fin and rudder because of this. I'm not 100% sure yet but I have been toying with the idea.

The top of the fin. The fin and rudder are the same thickness.

Bottom of the fin.

Today (Monday) I glued the doublers onto the fuse sides.

Weight while the glue dries.

So far I estimate 6-7 hours of very distracted build time.

My dog Hercules had been a very attentive helper throughout the process.

"C'mon we should be out there!"

"Ya know I could really use a new bone."

"You're supposed to be sleeping before work."