dawn
breaks . . . !
No, I'm not referring to the start of the day, but to the
near-demise of my Yamamoto 1600 trainer, Dawn!
Yesterday as I write this (i.e., June 17), was a gloriously sunny day
but surprisingly windy. All the same, we were flying and I was under
instruction from Gordon who rotated my model and handed over to me (we
were flying on the buddy box). I was feeling quite pleased with myself as, after that, Gordon had
virtually nothing to do and my flight was
going well. After a bit of enjoyable free flying, Gordon got me to do a
couple of practice landing circuits and then told me to bring her in. The wind was in an awkward direction, making it
necessary for us to land almost nose-in across the short direction of our
rectangular field and over a power-line which runs along the back
edge. You've guessed it - I hit it! My instructor was watching my
approach and, like me and others on the field who were watching, thought I was
clear and forward of the power-lines, but not so. The model hit the
lines head-on and dropped into the green wheat field below.
Here's
the damage - and that wide open crack extends right down the other side
of the fuselage as well. The power-line hit the cowl just below the nose
of the plane and then caught on the nose-wheel leg immediately below the
cowl. The force of the blow attempted to fold the fuselage at that
point, cracking it open like an egg, as you see!
The retaining clamps holding the nose-leg to the engine mounting
wall were broken, as well as a fair bit of damage to the underside
of the
cowl as seen on the right. That long split running from the nose-leg looks as
though the complete engine housing from the firewall forwards flexed a
fair way down with the large spring coil doing the damage seen in the
lower half of the picture.
When I picked the plane up and took a first look at the damage, I
thought I would be needing a replacement fuselage and cowl, but the
general consensus on the field was that it could all be repaired, so I
determined to have a go.
After a quick dash to Neville's (our local friendly model shop)
before he closed, I was soon back home with my repair kit - some Flair quick-drying
epoxy (not much of that for your money!), a strip of fibre-glass bandage and
a dual pack of NHP Nice-n-Simple finishing resin.
I followed the suggestions of the lads at the club and carefully closed
the crack, joining it with the quick drying epoxy to hold it back in
position ready for the bandage. I couldn't do it in
one go, but did it in about three stages, physically holding the joint until the resin went off sufficiently to hold it together. Then
it was a simpler matter to apply a thin coat of finishing resin around
the crack on the inside of the fuselage and bridge the crack with the
bandage, pre-soaked in resin and applied in a few slightly overlapping
pieces. The cowl was dealt with in just the same way but I was not happy
with the outcome and eventually decided to replace it. There were one or
two places where the outer surface of the fuselage had chipped
off, so they were filled with a little filler and when everything was set
firm and dry, all the joints were sanded ready for finishing.
As
well as the cowl, I also bought a decal sheet from MFA Como Drills, the
distributor of the Yamamoto 1600, and applied new side stripes and
forward window decals as well as my own home-made name decals. I didn't
manage the nice smooth finish to the crack that I had hoped for, but at
least she will fly again, albeit slightly battle-scarred!
Click on the post-box to e-mail me now!
four
stroke safety