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Tail tales
Thanks guys for your comment! Time for another update. Thank you Kevin for your remark of caution regarding the exhaust trails. I will definitely try it out first on the profile picture.
The horizontal and vertical stabilizer as well as rudder and elevator surfaces are tricky, especially the movable parts. They need to be carefully pre-shaped and glued together like the two halves of a shell. It would have been easier, and also possible, if Orlik had decided to combine certain parts into one, rather than individual parts to be entirely glued together.
The instruction drawings do not clearly indicate how the internal structure has to be positioned, which is somewhat frustrating. Particularly the rudder was a difficult assembly to make, the bottom edge partly consisting of too small petals and the front edge consisting of two halves making up one round surface. I didn't make many pictures of the in-between stages, I was too occupied with getting the job done in a decent way.
Eventually, things turned out quite well. Ensure that the horizontal stabilizer is in a true horizontal plane as indicated in the overview drawings. There is no V-shape but I found that the left stabilizer is slightly off-set and hopefully when the build is done I can correct that by slightly bending it down. Will use the wings for that purpose as reference, once the time is there.
Also the small position light on the rudder has been detailed, to make it stand out better.
A remark on the vertical fin: I reinforced this part internally with left over paper to make it stiffer and to avoid accidentally pressing through of the inside former.
That's it for now.
Erik
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