John has not had a lot of time to work on his Laser recently, but he reports the following progress:

I have hinged and mounted the ailerons and made up the M3 linkages between the ailerons and servos. I have checked the movements, as best I can without the surfaces being fixed, and reckon I have around 1" of up, which I think should suffice. Down I am not too worried about as I will introduce some differential movement on the transmitter.

The only other thing I have done is work on the spats, these seem to take an eternity to get them looking anywhere near nice. I have cut slots in the spats so that the aluminium undercarriage sits on the inside of the spat held together with an epoxy / micro fibre mix.

A hollow M10 grub screw is then used to hold the 3/16" diameter axle. Thanks go again to Dave for his turning expertise. I would have had the wheels mounted by now if it wasn't for the fact that I have these nice scalish Robart wheels with hubcap. They look great but to use the hubcap I cannot get a collet behind so will need to drill the axles for split pins, it is probably more secure anyway.

That is about the progress so far . . .

Alvaro has written to say that his Super Cub, featured on the last issue, is a Hobby Lobby Kit. It has a 46.5" wingspan, 312 sq. in. wing area, and uses a 400 electric motor with a 9 x 5 prop. He has now covered the model with Superkote and is now almost finished - pictures to follow!

Alvaro put his Aquastar to one side to give priority to the Cub, but here we can see that the Aquastar is now also almost finished.

With similar 'problems' to John Duxbury's (above), time has been spent on a few little minor details in preparation for covering, which has just got under way. 

Receiver on/off switch mounted through side wall of fuselage

Fuel tank and rx battery tucked away up front, firmly packed in foam. I have made a light-weight Plasticard wall to hide all this and help hold it in place.

Let covering commence! I am using Solartex in orange and dark blue. I was most interested to see that the manufacturer advises against treating bare balsa with sanding sealer when applying Solartex. They state that a very strong bond is achieved just by ironing on to clean, dry, dust-free wood and that some traditional treatments will reduce or prevent the bond between wood and Solartex, leading to a slack and sagging covering.

Orange covering complete - fuselage to follow in blue. The wing took me ages - especially the wing tips themselves! All the same, Solartex is great to work with.