Light filler

I found this in my LHS local hardware store not to be confused with LHS local hobby store

Its a ready to use light weight filler, Its very similar to a water soluble filler available at the LHS called Balsa-lite .

Great for filling dings and hollows on your next foam fuselage project.

I will use it from now on.

Shaken not Stirred

Well another busy weekend building PSS aircraft and some more lessons learnt.

I revisited the matt clear coat I had used on the Warthog and which came out all shiney,

I decided to give it a good stir with a long stick and found a thick sediment on the bottom of the tin, this had not mixed in with a good shake, so I gave it a good stir and sprayed up my second Pss Plane a sort of Jet inspired aircraft.

The clear gave a good matt coat and the jet looks good , hope it flies it has strange proportions.

Some feedback on the Warthog it weighs 2.8kg balanced , the Jet f1 as it will be known weighs

1.8kg and will probably balance at about 2kg

In case you were wondering ...it's not an old Zaggi wing but it is a recycled project.

Slope Commander- Part 10

With all the silicone hinging done but the elevators I now started with the servo tray for the rudder and elevator . The aileron servos and Flap servo will be mounted in the wing. More or less on track with this build now and I should be finish by the end of this week.




Hold your breath for the last post on the Slope Aero Commander Part 11

Estcourt Slope Weekend

Is anyone interested to join us on the Friday 31st of October through to Monday the 3rd of November for a Scale and General Fun-Slope-Fly at Estcourt? We will be staying at the Blue Haze Lodge. Lots of B&B in Estcourt.

green = tarred roads
yellow = off-road
blue = quick way to fly-site

A10 WARTHOG PSS PROJECT

Stay back it might bite....

Not to be left out of the PSS craze here is my secret project. (Now no longer a secret)

It has taken me 9 days to build to this stage, using the lost foam method for the fuselage, the wings and tailfeathers are balsa sheeting bagged onto foam and then glassed with 104gr to finish

off. The jet motors are made out of glass carbon around 2 x 2ltr spite bottles sponsered by Charl.

The paint is base coat colour and final coat 2k clear matt, which for some unknown reason has stayed glossy.

I look forward to seeing it in the sky over Volksrust , with a plethora of other warbirds and of course a lone Aero commander struggling to keep up.

Slope Commander - Part 9

Got a lot done today and with Mark De Klerk helping me things just went much smoother
and faster. Thanks Mark. I have completed the in flight engine cowlings as well as the fuselage bolt beams that will hold the wing down.
The wing will held down by two 6mm bolts in front of the wing and two 5mm bolts in the back.

The corresponding holes and 13mm dowels were align and fitted in the wing, and wing balsa block tips glued on (still to be sanded and rounded of)












Still have to cutout and hinge the Ailerons, flaps and elevators surfaces but like I mention in the previous build that I am running still slightly behind schedule but I can see the light at the end of the tunnel.

I plucked the courage to weigh all the parts constructed so far the
Wing =1.2kg (this is on the heave side but still this is a big wing 2.4Meter span and
350mm root 150mm tip)
Rudder and Stab = 250 grams.
Fuse = (1Kg with no foam remove yet, painted and finished -this surprise me)
All up weight with out equipment and nose ballast = 2.5 kg.
Add another say 700gr for RC equipment and ballast and I am looking at +/- 3.2 Kg
all up weight. I don’t think this is to heavy but it will require a good wind on Volkies
to be on the safe side for the maiden flight.

Two weeks and two days to go- time to move into top gear. More on the Slope Commander in Part 10.

Slope Commander - (Atlast) Part 8

20 days gone and less than 20 to go.
I managed to get the wing done today and as far as the schedule is concerned I am falling slightly behind but with a public holiday coming up on Wednesday I should be back on track. In the meantime I have cutout the wing , tail plane and vertical Fin seating’s in the fuse so there is progress.









The airframe is now complete

and next step will be cutting

out and hinging of the moving
surfaces.






More on this build Part 9 (and before you get excited to be posted Thursday or Friday)

no pressure at all, I am holding my breath.(insert smilie here)

Still waiting for the next part of the aero commander build

Aero Commander Part 8 still in Progress

Please have patiecnce your request will be answered in 3 days.
You are number 399 in the line. To listen to music please press 1,
to return to the operator, press 9 or hold for the next operator.

Waiting for the next part of the aero commander build

Slope Commander- Part 7

This weekend I managed to complete the stabilizer and rudder construction.
I still have to cutout the elevator and moving part of the rudder as well as the hinging.
More about that in a later build.

I started with the wing on Saturday sanding in the groves for carbon tows that will form the spar caps and formed the carbon L.E on the center panel.

I joined the center sections and laid in the bolt beams in the bottom of the center section of the wing.

Note that the bottom spar cap and ply dihedral keeper all join up on this beam. Once the wing is bagged 13 mm dowels with clearness holes for the 5-6mm bolts will inserted thru these bolt beams The 4 X 5-6 mm will be use to secure the wing to the fuse.

I hope complete the wing construction this week. Still 25 days left. It is going be a close call to finish this baby on time.

More on the slope commander in Part 8.

Slope Commander- PSS Part 6

I guess that I am not alone in burning some midnight oil trying to beat the dead line for the PSS slope weekend in October and the recent heat wave we have experiencing is not helping, making a person feeling
energy -less during the day.


With 30 days left there is still time left and last night I finish of most of the foam cutting with only the outer tips remaining to be cut.
I hope to start bagging the tail and rudder this weekend.


I am not going to cover the foam cutting (or feather cutter) as this will be a lengthy posting on its own but in the picture below you can see what my foam cutting table looks like.



















More on the Slope Aero Commander in Part 7 .

HTL#6 Silverton

The August winds didn't disappoint us again this year at the Silverton HTL. The day started off with a light wind and regular and nicely defined thermals but strengthened as it went on to end off with a strong and gusty wind with fragmented and very fast moving thermals. This proved very challenging and both Piet and I found it difficult to read the air and follow the thermals with our Sagitta and Tsotsi models and had to change to more suitable models for the last two rounds. Need I add Monday's weather was perfect with light winds all day and the beginning of our first highveld summer "heat wave".

Volney put together a very interesting but confusing contest for us: F3B duration rules with 200m winch lines, F3J flight line spacing and all classes to fly 10 minute max so that they could all post open scores.

The contest pace was brisk with Volney at the helm and Grabe helping out from time to time. The only delays were for line break fixes - of which there were many.

The lunch break was planned for after the contest, but due to the many delays and the boeries rolls being ready before flying finished, most of the guys just couldn't wait and tucked in while flying.

Field conditions for landing were good. The grass had obviously been well watered the day before the contest producing huge patches of shoe clinging, slippery mud where the grass had been harvested. The combined dry and dusty dirt road to the field and the slushy mud entrance road resulted in very messy cars, but I'm sure the Silverton carwash vouchers are in the mail.

All in all, another great HTL contest. Nice to have some green grass underfoot and great to see a few more BERG entrants. Final results were Conrad, Craig and Paul on the top three list. Piet placed 6th with consistently good flying, I slipped down to 15th with two bad flights (three launches on one flight before I found a patch of usable lift - the little Sagitta just not able to stretch between thermals from launch height) and Jochen ended 20th - not bad for his first contest flying a standard Tsotsi.

And to Evan, our special thoughts are with you and your family this week.

Slope Commander Part-5

As I mention in Part 4 that the fuse needed spray painting and this I manage on Saturday morning early as there was just about no wind to start of with. The finish came out not to bad but in order to get it perfect it will require much more time and work.
At this stage I am more concern about the weight and I need to move on to making the flying surfaces. I manage to cut the vertical tail and cut out of newspaper the templates for the windows that I will stick on with vinyl film. This still looks to big and I will trim the final shape of them down a bit. (hope that rudder looks more streamline now, Mike)

On Sunday I could not get much done because of the Silverton leg of the HTL, but last night I was chipping away at this build again. So more on this build in part 6.

Happy Birthday BERG Blog

BERG Blog Counter moves to +30,000 as we celebrate our 2nd year on the big WWW.
On our fist Birthday we had 7000 on the clock. I don’t know how many forward gear’s a Blog have, but every time you think that it has reached it’s saturation point , it move’s one more gear up as the visitors from all over the world just keep streaming in.

The statistic counter has revealed the flowing data.
Page loads 30170 for the last 2 Years (the number of times visitor has logged on to BERG Blog)
Unique Visitors 8000 for this year
First Time Visitors 6000 for this year
Retuning Visitors 2000 for this year

I heard Mike (GBOGH) said something about making a 6 Meter Ventus cake for this grand occasion .

To all our Blog readers and contributors many thanks keep The Blog on rolling.

Slope Commander -PSS Part 4

Friday night I completed cutting the wing, tail and rudder templates and I also prepared the fuse for spray painting on Saturday. I used 1 K primer and added thinners to make the mix so that I could paint it on with a paint brush. I gave the fuse two coats with second coat thinner that the first coat and lightly sanded the fuse after the first coat. Before I start the spray panting I will lightly sand the fuse down with a lighter grade of sandpaper.

I can only get the foam for the wing next week but I have cut the blank blocks for the rudder stabilizer. So no hold up as jet and the work can go on. I hope to cut the stab and rudder on Saturday as well.


More on building the Slope Commander in Part 5

Another 5 PSS Projects. on the go

Mustang, F5A by Norbert, Provost by Jason, Dragonfly by Paul & BeeDee 5 by Evan
20DV foam all nicely CNC cut and ready to start sanding.

Slope Aero Commander -PSS Part 3

(Click on the picture to make it lager )




The famous Rockwell Aero Commander that Bob Hoover flew for at more than 2500 Air shows and demonstrations. Now have a proud home under the wing of the just as famous
Concord the Smithsonian national Air and Space Museum. Bob donated this his personal Aero Commander to the museum after he lost his flying license at the age of 73.




Last night I started plotting out the wing sections that I want to use on the Slope Aero Commander. I prefer the plotter over a laser printer because I found in the past that some laser printers do not scale the dimensions inputted correctly. According to Hp the plotter can plot accurately up to 1/1000 of a inch. Any way, no way's one can cut the resulting template that accurately.

I plot all the Templates twice as to make intend to use them in my automatic foam cutter.

These paper templates once cut out will now be transfer onto Formica and cut to shape( see the picture below).Once all the templates are complete I will start cutting the tail, rudder and wing Foam cores.

I have no stock of Polyester foam but will order some shortly. In the meantime I still have to spray paint the Fuse. Some times you need the wind and sometimes not.

More on this build in Part 4.