Thoughts from the workbench of Radical RC. The online retailer of electronics and kits for radio control aircraft. Dave Thacker shares his thoughts and knowledge of electronics, batteries, kit design and overall enjoyment of the hobby.
Another fine example of collectivism and anti-capitalism in Venezuela. Toss off the chains of (PC) political correctness as I have. PC is simply a bludgeon designed to force the voices of reason into silence. I am not silent, I am awake, I am for Liberty. Now, listen to this and have a little giggle about these silly nitwits south of the boarder. (Reload page if video does not appear.)
Remember all the jokes over the decades about taking your own toilet paper if you visit Russia? They may have good intentions, but all over the world the result is the same, a ruling elite and the rest of the stinky masses living in poverty. Don’t let them do it to us here. I am for Liberty.
In the grocery checking out couple weeks ago. Wife wants a Sunday paper which is past the register. I grab the paper, hold it up for the cashier. “Got a paper.” he acknowledges. I stick it in a bag, he says, “Wait, I need to scan that.” I remark “you mean this thing has a bar code?” He reply’s “yes”. I said “I am shocked something as primitive as a printed newspaper could have a Barcode.?.?” “I would be nearly as surprised if I looked under the hood of a restored model T and found one of Henry Fords’s inventory Barcode stickers on the valve cover.” The youth appeared completely confounded as to my meaning. Reading his body language to ferret out his thoughts “….WTF is this dude talking about and why the hell is he talking to me?…cigarette….whats a model T?……..”
We’re converting a Hobby Lobby Telemaster into a 1928 Fairchild FC-2W2 for a National Parks Service program. This aircraft was the first ever owned by NASA and later the first owned by the National Parks Service. Information link at bottom.
While making a complex former, I felt the method was simple, interesting and important to share. Having arrived at the shape, I used the following method to copy it onto the material I wished to cut it from. The simple technique could help you build any aircraft from your own or purchased drawings.
Drawing of Fairchild Former
1. First we need a drawing. If your making “one off” parts as I am in this example, simply draw the part on standard 20 lb copier paper using pencil. I make lots of changes and mistakes as I go, so it’s important to have an eraser equipped pencil.
Headless Telemaster/Fairchild
1B. Here is the front of the modified fuse where our soon to be made former will be installed.
Fairchild Imagination
1C. Holding up our drawing to imagine what it’s going to look like. Does it look correct?
“Imagination is more important than knowledge. For knowledge is limited to all we now know and understand, while imagination embraces the entire world, and all there ever will be to know and understand.” Albert Einstein
Former Drawing and Copy
2. If your using an obtained drawing or you wish to preserve your drawing, use a copier or all in one printer to make a copy of the area containing the part you want to make. In this case, I made a copy of my pencil drawing just in case I discovered and error and wanted to alter the drawing before I finished.
Fairchild Former Heavy Pencil
3. Heavily pencil over the lines we wish to transfer to the wood. I used a standard #2 pencil.
4. Place the drawing, heavy pencil down against your material. You will notice the grain is running the wrong way in this former. However, it’s just a jig for building the nose, it’s not intended to provide any structure. The nose of this model has many facets of 1/4″ thick balsa. Although I’ll leave the former in the model, it could be removed if I wanted too. As this model has a short nose needing weight up front, I’ll be leaving it in.
Fairchild Plan Pin Down
5. Place two pins through the paper into the wood to prevent the drawing from moving. I choose top and bottom locations. Notice you can see the drawing through the paper. Makes me feel like Superman, you?
Fairchild Nickle Rub Down
6. Find something curved and smooth like a coin, I choose a nickle to rub the pencil into the wood.
Fairchild Lift & Inspect
7. Because we created a way to register the drawing to the wood, we can lift the paper up and look at our results as we progress. No danger of losing our alignment.
Fairchild Former Transfer Finished
8. Ahhh, thats what I’m talking about! The drawing has new been transferred to our material. It will be easy to cut it out now.
Fairchild Former On The Bandsaw
9. Doing what the band saw does best.
Fairchild Drill Hole
10. Drilling for the Scroll Saw
Fairchild Former Installing on Scroll Saw
11. Installing on the Scroll Saw
Fairchild Scrolling Along
12. Doing the inside, what the scroll saw does best.
Fairchild Former Against Print
13. How does it look against the print?
Fairchild Former Goes About Here
14. The former goes in about this position.
Fairchild Former Positioned
15. Former positioned and ready for addition of next nose sheeting segments. Since we are working with a model that is already built, we elected to jig the next two formers to the front of the fuse. when the 1/4″ thick balsa segments are added from the front of the fuse to this former, many facets will be formed representing the nose of this model. Using this method, we only need to make the 3 sides of each sheet accurate, they can be allowed to extend past the former. We can cut them off and sand them down against the former as we go. After all plates in position, we’ll snap out all the scrap sticks used to hold the former in place. The sanding bars are banded tightly to the fuse sides so I could measure and put the former in the center. They make a great straight edge.
I thought solving the problems of making and installing this former would be interesting to readers and hope you made it this far into a very long post.
