Now it’s time to close up the bottom of the fuselage with sheet balsa. This part of the building sequence offers me a fine opportunity to talk about one of the choices of design and construction technique that went into developing this kit. This is something that goes back to the very earliest days of […]
The last time we got together here to work on this airplane I finished up the session by giving the motor mounting box a reinforcing layer of 2-ounce fiberglass cloth bonded with a wet coat of thinned epoxy. We’ll have a close look at the finished mount soon enough, but right now (while that epoxy is REALLY curing) […]
Sorry…it’s been a while since I added anything to this story. Let’s just say that life has been really generous in providing me with things to do that don’t include model airplanes. However…there are LOTS of neat things going on in my shop, among them slow but steady progress on this Stinson SR-9. Let’s get back […]
During the last construction session I assembled formers F-3 through F-8 and built up the basic box structure that forms the bottom of the fuselage. During that entire assembly sequence the fuselage assembly was fastened to the building board with plenty of heavy-duty pins. When the last of the bottom stringers was in place I […]
In order to provide the most useful evaluation of this kit for those of you who are reading this, I’m following the construction steps in exactly the order they are presented in the instruction manual. The book says, build the tail surfaces first, then the wing panels and finally the fuselage, so that’s exactly what […]
It’s been a while since I have done any work that counts on this airplane…in fact, I have to confess that I’ve been letting it gather dust in my shop for about a year. I set the Stinson aside to work on the old FlyLine Great Lakes Trainer kit. That project turned into a twenty-nine-installment […]
It’s time to fire up the air compressor, set up the airbrush, and get some color on this airplane. Depending on the size of the model I am working on I will use either my Paasche airbrush or DeVilbiss automotive touch-up spray gun. The gun covers large areas way faster, but the airbrush wastes less paint during […]
It’s time to attach (hinge) the control surfaces…the rudder, elevator and ailerons. When to do this relative to covering, preparing a base finish, and adding the color coats is always a judgment call. I can’t imagine doing a final installation of the hinges before covering…there’s just too much stuff you can’t get to that way. […]
During one of my last building sessions I got the entire airplane covered and the Polyspan covering heat-tautened uniformly smooth and tight. During that part of the process of covering and finishing Polyspan is a bit like the popular one step iron-on film coverings. (If we had been using a traditional covering material like silkspan, tissue, or […]
Get yer pants on! The TigerKitten as presented in the Premier Balsa kit uses wheel pants derived from the original molds I made over twenty years ago. For a time I was offering molded fiberglass pants for sale on line, but those are no longer available. The Premier short kit includes vacuum formed moded plastic […]