Chris says he hasn't felt much like building over the last couple of weeks, but he has now fitted the engine to his scratch-built MB141, and work has commenced on making the cowl. The engine is an SC ·46 2-stroke and it is fitted with a 10 x 6 Fingali 3-bladed prop.

The main 'barrel' of the cowl is of ply construction, whilst Chris is carving and sanding the tapered front cone section from polystyrene foam. 

chardie@lineone.net

Double Trouble !

I have been a bit 'under the weather' during the last fortnight and this, coupled with an unusual amount of family 'taxi' work, has meant that I have spent much less time on the Citabria than I would have liked. Such time as I have had, however, has been spent tackling two major problems that I have discovered with my work so far!

Firstly, I discovered that I had made the trailing edge of the wing too thick (including ailerons) by gluing the shaped trailing edge flush with the edge of the lower trailing edge sheeting instead of butting it up to the back of the wing ribs. I decided against any bodging to try and overcome it, so stripped off the top trailing edge sheeting, removed the shaped material as carefully as I could, and re-constructed the complete trailing edge. 

My second problem, however, was Trouble with a capital ' T ' ! 

I thought I had managed to correct the earlier misalignment of the fuselage, but a further check showed that I had still not brought the tail taper in evenly from each side and there was also a similar, but slight, problem with the front end. Unlike Chris Hardie's MB 141, the Citabria is not meant to be asymmetric, but it looked as though that was what I would finish up with if I had continued!  

I was trying to think, what is the correct way of avoiding the difficulty I had run into and thought, 'What it needs is some sort of jig . . . jig? . . . hang on, you've got a jig!', as I remembered I had bought a Balsacraft fuselage jig when I first started kitting up for building. I didn't need it when I built the very much simpler ATS Kite and had completely forgotten I even had it. In the words of dear old Snoopy in a Peanuts cartoon of many years ago, I felt somewhat akin to a fool! If only there had been a suggestion of using a jig in the instructions . . . but then, I guess they thought anyone building a kit like this would know what they were doing!

The outcome? I decided I would try and strip the fuselage right down and start again. Obviously, I have lost a fair amount of balsa in the process, but as I write,

this has become

this(x 2) once again, and the jig awaits!

Lay your bets, gentlemen, as to whether I succeed! 

Going public with this project really is living dangerously, I must say!