Scale Balsa USA 1/3 Scale Super Cub Kit " NIB "

[fencelake]

Next I cut the hatch in the bottom of the fuselage and glued in supports and plywood for the blind nuts. The hatch is soft balsa so I'll probably put a thin layer of fiberglass on both ends to keep it protected and maintain its shape.

 

[fencelake]

So I decided to use twin 500ml Fiji bottle fuel tanks and they have to be able to be placed in and out of the forward fuselage using the hatch which works fine. Another note, all these components will be screwed in from the bottom with 4-40 bolts and blind nuts so that I can always have access to them.

 

[pawnshopmike]

 

[fencelake]

After some thought and the possibility that access to the fuel tanks in the forward compartment might be really difficult, I think I'm still going with twin tanks, but I think I'm going to move them back under the floor of the cabin. The carb is going to be on the bottom and the fuel line will go through the bottom of the firewall, so the travel may not be that bad from the tanks... about the same as a normal aerobatic airplane. I may change my mind again, but that's where I am this morning. I think the single tank is too tall and will make the cabin sole higher than scale...

 

[fencelake]

So something I've been thinking about for a while is that I built the flaps and ailerons per the plans and didn't create the airfoil shaped surfaces. This created a problem because the flaps were unable to drop as much as they needed or as much as the full scale. Instead of going back and completely rebuilding them I just got straight up midieval on those puppies and made a decision. Was it right? Who knows, but it felt good!

Here's the full travel before the mod.

 

[fencelake]

I decided to figure out how much of the flap was in the way, and I built a jig for them and then took them out to the band saw and cut those puppies down. Haha! I used some spare sheeting that I had to put over the cut. Now they can still be hinged at the top of the wing and have full travel.

Is this scale? No... am I closer to flying this baby? YES!

 

[BalsaDust]

Nothing wrong with a lot of travel on the flaps.

 

[fencelake]

Nothing wrong with a lot of travel on the flaps.

That's how I feel too, plus in the real super cub for a STOL takeoff you get the tail up and yank the flap handle to full and it pops off the ground. I'm hoping to duplicate that in this version, which requires some pretty full, full flaps. Ha!

 

[fencelake]

Over the weekend I did a little fiberglass work. I fiberglassed the bottom hatch, as well as inset washers and made it so the 4-40 screws will be flush with the outer plane of the fuselage rather than have screws sticking out. I also added a little fiberglass to the rear hatch as well. And as long as I was getting itchy... I decided to reinforce the bottom cross members with some fiberglass as well, because I'm always lifting it up from there and inevitably one will break out. Not anymore!

 

[fencelake]

Today I added the boot cowl wood and also put in the instrument panel. Because the panel is more square, I had to begin building up in front of the panel to feather it out. Here are some photos and the full scale as well.