A1-C End of Construction

For the first time in over 20 years, the plane is complete in all its parts! Even if during the last days there were lots of minor improvements and re-engeneering of a few areas, I managed to wrap it up. The main concern was to get the CG right, or as close as possible, without having to add ballast to center the model. In the design phase, I moved a lot of weight to the tail to anticipate the extra weight of the canopy and main landing gear, which at the end came out much, much lighter than I thought. As a result, during the A1-C construction I improved the position of the electric components to free up space and be able to move the batteries all the way to the firewall, with the ESC sitting flat on the bottom of the engine cowl, directly exposed to the airflow. The last minute addition of a separate BEC to run receiver and servos required also a rewiring of the electronics. Eventually everything came up together nicely.

The finishing touches

After fixing a few imperfections, it was the time for the final sanding and the covering with the plastic film. I used the films from Hobbyking, and even if I was surely out of practice, they were easy to apply and fairly resistant once on the plane.

Before the covering, I had to prepare all the surfaces with a fine sanding, using filler where needed. Very important was also to hoover all the dust from the wood to ensure good adesion of the film.

Again some details required improvement but nothing major. We also tried to have some stickers cut for us in the local copy shop, but they wouldn’t provide that kind of service. We resolved by hand cutting our own logos from adesive paper using our home printer to draw the lines.