| REG'S SIG CITABRIA
A spot or two
of trouble
Quite a bit of time has been
spent on finishing the covering of the Citabria.
 Before
covering the final section of the fuselage, the full
tail assembly had to be glued in place. To ensure the
correct alignment of the tail surfaces, the wing was
mounted, and here I encountered some difficulty in getting
everything right with the tail. Although fairly minor
- I hope - I just could 
not get every dimension left and right of the fuselage
exactly equal, so I guess I still have a very slight
bend in the fuselage; certainly not enough to detect
by my eye, but causing a small deviation of two or three
milimetres on dimensions that should be exactly equal.
I trust that such a discrepancy can be corrected when
trimming the plane - we will see! Having glued the full
tail assembly in place, including the fin and rudder,
covering has been completed.
I thought I would have a go
at painting the covering rather than sticking further material on
to the Solartex, so decided on nothing more than a bar of deep
blue at each end of the wing and tail surfaces as my first-ever
attempt at using an airbrush. After doing a small trial on a piece
of covered scrap balsa, I applied masking tape at the end of the
wing, then masked off another eighteen inches of the wing with
newspaper and, with some trepidation, spray painted the outer four
inches of one end of the wing. I am using Solarlac with Solarlac
thinners, but was not too sure how much thinners to use - I think
I may have thinned it a little too much as coverage seemed a bit
thin, but I was not certain as to what to expect. I applied one
part thinners to three parts paint - if that's too thin, somebody
please tell me!
Any way, the sad thing is
that when I inspected the finished job, I discovered tiny spots of
paint on the unmasked areas of the wing, particularly on the top
surface! I had not bargained for the possibility of this, but
clearly I should have completely covered the whole of the rest of
the wing before starting work. Oddly, I found that most of these
little spots actually flicked off the wing after drying, but there
are some that have got into the grain of the material and will not
budge. They are not terribly obvious when viewed from a reasonable
distance, but I know they are there (and so will the
lads on the field!), so I am going to strip the top of the wing
and re-cover it! Once that is done, there are a few little bits of
detail to be attended to in the cabin and to the engine cowl, then
the windows of the cabin have to be fitted. They are meant to be
simply cyanoed straight to the window frames and cabin sides, but
I hate trying to run thin cyano into flat surface-to-surface
joins, so will be looking out for any alternative adhesive that
might be available. Any hints or tips on that would also be
appreciated.
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