Bill Higgins' 2.3m Extra 330 Build Thread - Page 1
These pages chronicle the building of Bill Higgins' Comp-ARF 2.3m Extra 330.
Many thanks to Bill for allowing me to post all his hard work on my site.
You can visit Bill's website at www.billhigginsjr.com
Over to Bill.........
I'm going to try to document as
best I can, my build of my Composite-ARF 2.3 Meter Extra. I received the Plane
on Friday (11/12/04) and didn't really get to start on it till late Saturday
night. Naturally, the first thing I did after
opening up the boxes, was fit all of the major components together to see how
she'd look. Pretty cool actually !!!
Main Gear, Tailwheel, and Cowl.
I'm deviating slightly from the order that Composite-ARF has you put things
together, so you'll notice in the first section, that I haven't mounted the
wheels or wheel pants, and that just because I had to order some wheels. I cant
believe I didn't have any laying around the shop !!
Next up was the Motor Box mounting. All that was done here is that the holes are drilled into the pre-marked areas on the motor box, and blind nuts are placed on the backside of the mounting holes. You can also see that I added some light balsa blocks to provide a little more "meat" for the nylon cowl mounting bolts to grab hold into.
Next up was a fairly tricky engine
mounting procedure. It wouldn't have been difficult had I had more than one
person doing it, but without help I had to invoke some stationary help !!
I used a step
ladder to hold the fuse vertical while a placed a bubble level on the engine box
to get everything perfectly level so the engine would stay up there without
anyone holding it or it being attached to anything. Once the engine was placed
on the box, I placed the cowl over the top and installed 2 cowl bolts. Then I
stepped back and looked at the thrust and centrelines, moving the engine a
little bit each time until I had it centred right where I wanted it. Then,
without touching the engine, I removed the cowl being careful not to disturb or
move the engine and then, once the cowl was out of the way, I used a sharpie to
trace around the engine standoffs to give me a reference to drill the holes
with. Non-standard but it worked !!
Pipe Mounting Method, Canopy Tint
and trial fitting.
The last thing I did tonight (11/14/04) was to create a mounting method for the
tuned pipe. I'm not positive I'm going to stay with this method yet, which is
why I haven't glued it to the fuse yet, until I'm sure it's the way I want to
go. I also tinted my canopy using 5 bottles of Rit black dye in a large
container filled with hot water at about 125 degrees for 2 hours.
Progress during the weekdays is
going to be slow at best ! (My damn job is getting in the way of my hobby !!!)
All I worked on tonight was fitting the canopy frame and cutting out the holes
for the mounting blocks!!
Once the holes are spaced and cut in the canopy frame, we attach the frame to the fuse with masking tape and mark through the cut outs in the frame onto the fuse. Then we remove the frame and cut through the marks on the fuse that will now match up perfectly with the frame.
As a side note......You'll notice
in looking at the pictures that the Tuned pipe rests a mere 1/16 of an inch
underneath the extra thin fiberglass wing socket. Quite a few folks have
reported melting the socket due the the extreme heat the pipe generates. From
researching the threads on flyingcirkus and RCUniverse, folks have been using
balsa, ply, and thin heat insulation with mixed results. I'm going to try
coating the sleeve with some brush on ceramic heat shield from BVM Jets. The
folks at BVM said 2 or 3 coats, and it should not be affected by the heat at
all. We'll just have to wait and see !!!
Next, I mounted my control arms in the elevator surfaces tonight and mounted the servos.
Here's the photo's of the hatch and the weights of the aluminum vs. carbon tubes. Oh-yeah....and I got the wheels and pants mounted also!...
Tube Weight comparisons....
Well, Finished up the elevators
tonight (except for drilling the stab tube holes) and will probably move on to
either the Rudder horn, or mounting the Ignition module, battery, and throttle
servo in the motor dome. I hope to get all of that , plus some work on the wings
done this weekend.
You'll notice in looking at the elevator horns that it appears that I've drilled
a hole closer to the surface than what composite-ARF recommends. That's not the
case. I left the horn long so if I wanted to fly precession, I could go out on
the horn and increase my mechanical advantage. The hole closest to the surface
is exactly 22mm from the surface (which is what CA recommends) the hole furthest
out is 27mm.
I've got roughly 55 degrees of up elevator, and 45 degrees of down. Should be
enough to play around with.
