26 March 2003

Well, a couple of weeks of hard work, and things are moving along.
I have finished the instrument panel (except some holes) and then I have dismantled the whole helicopter for cleaning and priming of the aluminium.
It was quite a shocker to see the helicopter turn into a big pile of parts on a pellet! I had the use of a paint boot for a single day, so there I went. In the middle of it, I heard some helicopter noise outside, and found a newly finished Angle helicopter doing its first flight, very nice machine, but only a single seater...
In the meantime the Frame is away for sandblasting, priming and painting.
I then spend a week building the Engine Shroud, it is a lot more work than I thought :)
Note the special tool I made to make the cooling-fan edge, I glued two layers of particleboard together, and carefully cut a circle at the right diameter using a jigsaw with medium fine teeth. The resulting cut is exactly wide enough for the strip of aluminium to be slotted in, and then you can just use a hammer, to hammer out the flange. I made the two parts of the fan surround in less than 20 minutes with this!! And an excellent result. No stretched/shrinker needed!

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Photo album generated by album from MarginalHacks on Wed Mar 26 22:27:20 2003