Swinging with the Comet 'nickle and dimers' and other stuff

[simpleflyer]

Started work on the inner panels of the wing. Parts fit is good and went together quickly.

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The outer panels had a couple more parts, so they took a bit longer.

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Frank Ehling's redesign of the wing makes it an easy job to build this wing.

[simpleflyer]

Shaped and sanded the wing-tips and trailing edges of the outer panels.

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[simpleflyer]

Fall yard work and other stuff has slowed the work on the Jetco 50-X project.

However, we were able to participate in the Berkeley kit/plan cook-up at the Stick and Tissue Forum. We happened to have a Profile Powerhouse kit in our stash and decided to build it for the cook-up. One can find a plan for the Profile Powerhouse at:
http://www.outerzone.co.uk/plan_details.asp?ID=5468 A pic of the Profile Powerhouse.

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The Berkeley kit is typical for time of its production in the 1950s. Well drawn plans, good engineering, and fair die-cut wood.

Construction started with the wing.

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The die cutting was good and leading and trailing edges were nicely shaped. There was a minor issue with the rib notches in that some were cut wider than the rib width.

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[simpleflyer]

The wide rib notches were corrected by inserting small bits of i/16 balsa scrap into the notches along with the rib to make a tight glue joint. Also the underside of the three ribs in the middle of the wing are covered with 1/32 sheet balsa.

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The wing as designed has a poly-hedral with breaks in the wing middle and in each outer panel. We intend to have a removable wing, so we will eliminate the break in the middle and put dihedral in the two outer panels.

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Tissue cover is applied to the wing. The fuselage and tail parts are sanded and partially assembled. The horizontal tail will be modified to be removable.

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[simpleflyer]

The Profile Powerhouse is assembled except for the end of the nose. We will be flying the Powerhouse as a 'swinger' so we gave some thought for a creative nose weight.

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And our decision was this Cox 020 TeeDee. I got it from Smitty, our long time friend and modeling mentor. A long while back he had a fire in his garage which served as: office, hobby shop, workshop, and storage area. Sadly, it damaged a significant amount of his model stuff. After the fire, he patiently went thru the ruins and tried to salvage whatever he could. He gathered a lot of half-A engines and put them in a can of kerosene to prevent further damage. Most were unusable for flying, but I mentioned to him that I would like to have them as I was collecting old half-A engines and he gave me the lot. Sorting thru the engines, I found the 020 TeeDee. It was un-runable so we cleaned it up a bit for show. Now it serves as the nose weight for the Profile Powerhouse.

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The Profile Powerhouse ready for flight.

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[simpleflyer]

Pix of the Profile Powerhouse in flight. It could use a bit more nose weight. But this is temporarily corrected by sliding the wing back a bit in its mount.

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Enjoy,

SF

[simpleflyer]

On the previous page of this thread we show the construction of a 40 inch wingspan swing control model called the SS-40. Today was a great day for flying, so we took the SS-40 and some other of long wing swingers for some flights. In one of the flights of the SS-40, we captured this interesting pic as the craft flew thru a gust of air.