mberme

Hi
The landing gear seems to be very complex

jofunk

Yes they are. They stand wider than the fuse when down, and retract on a 45 degree angle toward the center line of the plane.. you can also cheat and have them retract straight up under the plane like the Frankel plans.

jofunk

Vladimir has the airfoil shape just about sanded into the Hoz. stab plug. Once he is finished shaping it he will glass it and then send it to Sebastian for panel line and rivet detailing.

sysiek

My Feedback: (176)

I did visit Vladimir Saturday to pickup some templates for the panther to reinforce the nose landing gear plates and let me tell you the stab is giant and took long time to finish the air foil forever sanding and checking the air foil .

BlazerB52

My Feedback: (7)

That is huge. Now I am getting jealous. Makes the mark frankel plane look small. Rock on.....

jofunk

Everyone is getting older. It will be easier to see,,,,,,,,,,until you paint it the color of the sky.

jofunk

The Phil Nuckle plans are not something you can plan build a plane from, and squeezing three view bulkheads into his outline is no fun and not very accurate. I have buyers remorse with all the money I spent on plans, enlarging, and documentation. With that said my friend Bill has come to my rescue. He is very good with CAD programs and offered to take a three view drawing and turn it into something I can use, a lot of fuselage cross sections. It looks like he is well on his way to getting it done. I can't wait to get them and start engineering the wing plug ins, landing gear and engine mounts. Here are a few screen shots of his progress. I will have to give Bill some stick time if this works.

Boomerang1

Love these scratch builds & learning new techniques.

There's not much to learn from yet another plastic Chinese jet 'build' thread except how people correct the faults that the factory build in.
I wonder if they deliberately build in faults to stimulate our brains as we overcome those same faults?

Will be good to see how you conquer the all moving fin & tailplane. - John.

jofunk

While I am waiting for Bills CAD work I extended a wood lathe to turn a plug , to make a mold for the Vigilante drop tanks. The plane has 4 huge tanks under the wing. On the 1/6 scale model the drop tanks are 41" long. Vladimir machined a few ends for the conduit for the lathe to accept it. The idea is to glue a block of foam on the conduit and then start making a mess. The extension is a little "spring boardy" so it will need to get clamped down before the process starts. This is the same lathe that the 1/4 scale Panther tip tank plug was shaped on.

BlazerB52

My Feedback: (7)

Some more stuff.

[ATTACH]1988394[/IMG]

[ATTACH]1988395[/IMG]

jofunk

I am even more remorseful. Those are two things I paid money for from Bobs Air Documentation. It is good to have them posted up on this thread now though. thanks Blazer.

Joe

BlazerB52

My Feedback: (7)

I find these things by accident when searching for other stuff. In Bob's defense he had to do some hunting and detective work to find some of the stuff. Especially when I google it and use other search engines. Those do not bring very much up about the vigilante.
Blazer

BlazerB52

My Feedback: (7)

jofunk

I found this chunk of urethane foam a few years back and have been storing it all that time to find a use for it. I will try carving the drop tank plug from it. It is 6" thick which will be perfect since the tank is 5" at its widest point.

jofunk

I did more work on the drop tank plug. I inserted some dowel rods through the conduit to help drive the foam block. hopefully the urethane glue will expand and fill all the voids.

jofunk

I chucked the plug up in the lathe after I rough cut the plug with the hand saw. The rasp and 80 grit knocked the plug down very quick. I need to make a template negative and then final shape the plug. right now it is still too large.

jofunk

This is very close to the final shape.

jofunk

The lite filler didn't seem to agree with the urethane foam. It didn't want to sand smooth. I threw a coat of epoxy resin on the plug to soak into the voids. this will help the fiber glass hold the resin when it is time to glass it…... It is easy to work on when it is in the lathe.

jofunk

BIll sent me a few screen shots of the awesome cad work he is doing in his spare time. When he gets a chance he wants to tweak it in a few places…….. One of the challenges is getting an almost three inch thick airfoil to look correct next to the fuse. We have to decide how thin we can safely go. On the full scale Vigilante the airfoil is very thin and most of it matches the top of the fuse……... It is pretty neat how he can put a skin on the work with the cad program. In time we will have some excellent information to work with.

jofunk

I glassed the drop tank plug with two layers of 6 oz cloth with a final layer of 2.7 oz cloth to help fill the weave.. The roller seems to be a quick way to evenly apply the resin. It is just a 1" segment of mini roller on a 1/4 20 bolt through a piece of wood.

8178

My Feedback: (17)

It is hard to appreciate how, big, nasty and loud the Vigilante is unless you have been on the ramp with them running. We were in awe!

jofunk

I sprayed on a coat of primer and then ran a sanding belt over the plug to see how lumpy things were after the glassing. It is not too bad. A thin coat of body filler should get things smooth…………..I cleaned off the work bench in preparation for some fuse. work. I was painting some rooms and had some left over paint so the work bench got a coat.

jofunk

I stopped by Vladimir's house today to take a look at the work he did on a parting board for the hoz. stab mold.

jofunk

We are getting dangerously close to starting to build something. Here is some of the final CAD work Bill did to double check the shapes of everything.

jofunk

The plans from the CAD work came out great. There are 20 plus cross sections to use. I can't take a picture of the plans for security reasons. Actually my camera won't pick up the lines because they are too fine. As I build you will see what I am getting off the drawings. The final shape is a combination of the three view and the Trumpeter plastic model. I C temped the air foils for the wing and cut some formica templates. I also found some foam and cut the plan views for the wing. The outer panels will be cut separate from the inner panels for three reasons. The taper is too great for the tip template to support the cut. The span of one wing is too large to control the bow, and the outer panel TE is more complex than it looks. the fuse will be 21" wide and I threw a 4' straight edge on the foam blocks for scale.