This build has been no fun at all...

Seriously. This is my third build of the Ultrastick 10cc and this one has been one pain in the ass after another. It has been three days of total immersion: I get started and hours go by before I realize it. Today was build final, but I have, yes, some issues to resolve before its a wrap.

My shabby workshop in my garage from the1700's 

(yeah, my apartment is in a house over 250 years old).

The tail assembly looks great, but it was one little thing after another. It starts with my habit of replacing CA hinges with pin hinges. Lets just say I should have stuck with the CA hinges. Despite perfect dry fitting, once the epoxy went on nothing went as planned. I am honestly am some what shocked at how clean it looks. The discerning reader will note the cote patches and kindly say nothing about them...

I was so annoyed at the process I was prompted to put this missive here as a reminder. See that space just aft of the vertical stabilizer? There was one in the front too, with the deep attachment point in between. Seems the epoxy lifted it and let it slide back a couple of mm, despite my taping the entire thing down. This, of course, placed the rudder-fin joint back a couple of millimeters, making the tail assembly a couple of mm aft, which it bore grudgingly.  Yeah, its been that sort of build...

The dual switch assembly went in, also with a few minor issues. One of which I found the wiring for both switches to be Y'd together into one Futaba style connector to the receiver. One is supposed to be receiver, the other ignition. This switch came from the last Ultrastick. Did I do that? It does have one Y;d lead for the lead from the battery to the switches, but the outputs should be separate. This issue became obvious when I was trying to wire in the optical kill switch: there was no lines from the switch to a connector for the kill switch power input. If I did that weird Y, kudos as the solder work was so perfect I wondered it if came that way, how could that possible work, and how did I set this up last time? I am still not sure I know WTF is happening...

At the end of the day this is what I had, the optical kill switch not installed at this pic.

Because this is only 17 seconds of flaming hotness You Tube made it a short, and I can't figure out how to get teh embed code for a short, so you'll have to click the pic for the video. Sorry for my tone, I had had enough of cockamaemee BS.

Then there was this little gem. I expected a tube from the electronics bay to the rudder control rod exit point, and likewise on the elevator side. The first segment of the tubes is visible, but the wire hit every frame as if it was NOT in a tube. Took forever. I had no idea where it would come out, but the rudder, then elevator exit points popped thru when I finally got the rods there. That likely was because there was a least a tube at the end, or it would never have exited. WTF? Well, it works... The control rods are cut to exact length so you have to use the metal clevis provided. Which led to this problem...

             

Sorry for the video quality, doing a two-handed thing one-handed. None of the metal clevis's fits tightly enough. I had to crush them all down more tightly then screw them in, and secured them with a littler CA (one still came apart today).  FFS. This was true for all of the small gauge clevis's, I didn't use the large ones.

So, that was yesterday.

Today wasn't as bad, but time flew. I went in at around 930a, looked up and it was almost 2p, blinked and it was 630p. Hadn't even bothered to stop for lunch (and I had skipped breakfast). 4

I finished up installing the electronics, (will get a pic tomorrow), and mounted the engine. I installed the optical kill switch. When I turned on the power to the switch the LED didn't light up. Checked to make sure my switch assignment was good (Gear to H button on my iX12). Checked to make sure the ignition switch worked and had power by swapping it to the receiver. It did. So maybe the LED is bad or the kill switch is, though one means the other as I don't have a spare LED. So I ordered a new one that will arrive tomorrow. I don't think the status of the electronic ignition matters, but if the new switch doesn't work, maybe? All of this, mounting the engine, unmounting it as I drilled the throttle control rod tube whole too high, remounted it. I also painted and gas proofed the firewall. All of this seems to have take more time than it should. 

I did take a moment to paint the prop tips. I did the classic red strip on white background, but it didn't go well and re-did it as just white. Not sure I will bother with the red center stripe.

I pulled the DC-3 from the loft. Haven't flown this in years... started thinking about it last night. It doesn't like grass for take-off and landings, so I haven't been able to. It tended to lift off before it had quite enough airspeed to stay aloft because of the grass. Now that I have access to a geotex runway, that may not be a problem. Its a simple foamie. Pic tomorrow.

And now I am starving...

Tomorrow I will install the new optical kill switch. I hope it just works. Then will come the challenge of getting the EVO 10cc engine to start, run and tune easily... not looking forward to that. I may take a day off depending on weather and go fly or sail or both.