Mercy! Mercy! That Dang Nabed PERCY!

Frustration

Frustration,

The past couple of days I have been working on this old antique Piper Cub, RC (About 1/5 scale) flying model. I like to rehab old stuff and I catch a lot of flack from my friends who provide plenty of well meaning advice. For example they say things like… "Learn to fly a trainer first and then follow the normal progression to more advanced models." Or… "Why are you so obsessed with fixing up old junk?" Anyway I simply smile and shrug and do the things in the hobby that I find compelling.

Last night I went to bed frustrated. There were two problems that I could just not seem to get solved and my wife kept coming to the sunroom window, peering out and trying to see what was the source of all those mutterings and expletives .

The first was trying to get the sleeve thread barrels lined up to accept the motor mounts. Let me explain. On an RC model the engine causes a lot of vibration and when you attach it to the firewall threaded sleeves or blind nuts are required because the wood alone will not survive long without some help. I suppose everyone has their own technique and mine is to set one corner, then do the opposite one and continue with the next two. The problem is compounded by two factors. First is that the engine must be shimmed about a degree left and a degree down. This is to compensate for the counter rotation of the engine. The next problem is that one needs the proper drill size to an extended length so the drill can be aligned straight with motor mount and drill through the firewall. My Black and Decker Drill and even my Dremmel are not well suited to getting into tight spots. The result was that when I drilled in the sleeves and screwed them in they didn’t line up right and hence all the swearing. I compensated this morning by over drilling the mounting holes to provide me with enough slop to get all the screws into the sleeves. What a pain in the butt!

My second problem involved the wire linkages. This was a bigger model than what I was used to and the elevator and rudder needed stronger servos. I had these but the wires tended to bend. The old school solution was to use long hard wood dowels to bridge most of the span and attach shorter machine threaded rods to either end. The newer method is to use plastic tubing that slides into one another and run a threaded rod into the inner tube at each end. What I didn’t know was that the rod needed to be of a length that reached out to the outer tube. It is pretty cool how the rod is inserted into the inner tube. You chuck it into the drill and drill it right in. I tried twisting and spent over an hour on the first of the linkages and still didn’t get it right… Hence the swearing.

As old as this model is I am not sure it was ever flown. The servos on the wings were never installed. Imagine that. A model over twenty years old that was never flown.