Just finished a quarter scale SPAD in Frank Luke colors. Probably won't get to fly it until sometime in the Spring. Still needs a pilot; I commissioned my daughter to paint one from Best Pilots. She has way more artistic talent than I. Power is Moki 1.8, finished weight 18#6oz. Pretty much box stock, but I did do pull-pull on the rudder and make the elevator pushrod internal. Kit was well done. The only problem I found was the aft spar notches in the lower wing ribs; they were about 1/32" low, both top and bottom of the rib. Will show a couple photos of the sprung landing gear I made. Everything went smoothly up to putting on the colored paint. I had done a BUSA Morane A-1 with Rustoleum and I thought it looked good. So I figured to do that again. Apparently I couldn't get the exact same colors because it looked terrible after painting. So I sanded that all out and had latex matched to FS chips per Windsock Datafile documentation. I like the colors much better. Of course sanding over the fabic covering left fuzzies over some of the ribs and a couple of cuts. It is good enough for my purposes. The vinyl graphics are by Callie Graphics and I am thrilled with them Field assembly requires 26 screws! I hope I can get it in the van in one piece so I don't have to deal with that.
To make the sprung landing gear I laser cut this piece for the bottom of the struts.
Then I aligned the kit parts and cut off the "axles." Here it is silver soldered together. New axles are half axles per the full-size and rubber bands in lieu of bungees.
Chuck
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