Comet "Phantom Fury" Construction Project Session #13
Comet "Phantom
Fury" Rubber Powered
Free Flight Model Airplane
By Tommy Gray
AMA 17063
Well, as they say, "The Devil's in the Details". I got the fuselage trimmed and striped in the last session, and this time I am doing the windshield.
First, I decided to cut a pattern out of some card stock. I did it a little differently from what you might imagine. I did it in multiple pieces and taped the whole thing together before cutting out the windshield so I could hopefully install it in one piece.
In the picture below, you can see the completed pattern.
I cut out each side window, and did the front in two pieces. I then trimmed them perfectly before taping the whole thing together into the pattern you see above. I had envisioned simply gluing the whole thing on in one piece. Well, after a couple of tries, it did not happen. I never could get everything to fit exactly as I wanted it to, so I bit the bullet and cut the side windows off the whole windshield, and glued them on one at a time. Once the glue had dried on them, I took the front and bent a nice sharp crease where the center was and glued it into place. I used regular Pacer Formula 560 canopy glue readily available in most hobby shops and from most suppliers, to glue the pieces on.
You can see in the next picture that the thing came out pretty well. It was so clear it is hard to see on the plane, so I turned it a little to try to make it visible. Hopefully you can see it.
One final note here. When attempting to glue on the front it became painfully apparent that I HAD to have something at the bottom for a backstop as the thin celluloid was not stiff enough to stay in place. If you will look at the bottom of the front piece you can see that I took a small piece of 1/16" square balsa, and sanded it into a triangle shape, and glued a piece of it in for a backstop on both sides. Looks pretty good to me....how about you?
Well that is it for now. Next time, I hope to have my rubber in so I can make up the motors.
More to come.....Tommy!