DG 500 ELAN

The work has re-commenced on the GBOGH DG 500 fuselage ,there has been lots of dusty sanding work , but ultimately these efforts are rewarded with quality finishes later on.

The polyester spray filler has nearly all been sanded off ,the high spots are just smooth glass and can be seen clearly.

I have layed down three fairly thick coats of white 2k these will be sanded down with 600 grit water paper after all the additional fuselage work is complete and then sprayed with final coats including coloured stripes . Using a string to mark the centre line as a reference I have marked out the canopy ,this I did with a white board marker so it could be redrawn until it looked right.

I dont have plans and as this glider is only scale-ish I used some good colour photos as a referance.

Once the canopy was cut out using a thin fibre wheel on a DREMEL tool It popped of no problem showing the waxed packaging tape layer

underneath.

The layers of glass are nice and strong and I will re-inforce the sides of the canopy opening with carbon and a servo tray.

The expanded polystyerene is cut out in chunks,

try do this over a plastic sheet out of the wind, otherwise you'll think its been snowing.

Eventually you just pull the remaining packaging tape out , the finish is fairly smooth and shiney and will need to be roughed up in areas where re-inforcing needs to be attached (in this case some serious carbon tows down the sides).

The foam only extended back to the trailing edge of the wing thereafter the boom is a rolled tube of card type paper , with a stronger cardboard in its centre for support this is re-leased by pushing a rod or dowel stick down the sides to collapse it inwards , and then pulled out .

There you have it the collapsed tube , the support tube , still bonded to the foam pod (notice the spacer I used halfway down to centralise everything).

This is a clean way to build a big fuselage no fuss and no melting out the foam with a solvent and all the goo that is left behind. The melting out of the foam is the way to go if it is a small or difficult shaped fuselage.

At this point a milestone has been reached and

the next steps are the canopy seat , servo tray,

wing joiner tube and rod and decission on how to control the tail feathers sooo far away.

The Go Big Or Go Home philosophy is still on track ,here is the proof ...................oh by the way the little electric 3d that sidetracked me recently, did fly three times,then the motor emmitted a cloud of the deadly smelly blue/white smoke and that was that , this was on the day that the bad Karma gripped the BERG field .. undaunted I have replaced the Brushless motor with an upgraded AXI motor all part of the learning curve I guess, hope to try again soon, depending on the moon phase and the karma availability.

Cheers for now

Mike