I am wondering if I am alone in this. It seems that even though I have been a fabricator and craftsman for years doing things many would never try, I am finding building my 1st airplaine model to be daunting.
I am building a Mountain Models J3 cub.
aside from Gluing too soon I believe I made EVERY MISTAKE possible
It started with covering the tail feathers without sanding a bevel on the edges.
I decided to just let it be and soon I glued the Tail feathers onto the fuseloge. I notisce the next day that I had the whole thing tilting low on the right side.
Then... I decided to fix it so I put several applications of debonder and waited.... and waited...... (I seem to be perpetually in a hurry so this seemed to be a LONG time)
finally I was able to lift the right side a little.... I know now of course I should have continued to completely disassemble this, but what I did was push the right side up and build a small fillet to hold it up. Awesome I got away with it right? no..... It seems after I started looking the next day that I had only lifted the front of the wing and It is now about 3/16" higher on the leading edge where it touches the fuselage.
I then managed to debond this stuff and re align it properly.
I messed up the hinges... A couple of times... Then I covered the tail section without seperating the elevator from the horiz stab. MESSY
then I rebuilt the whole trailing edge of the horiz stab and front edge of the elevator... Got the hinges in beautifully.
In the process I recovered them BEFORE I put them together.. I was very cautious. I had come to realize that my Top Flite iron was too hot for the ultralite covering I was using so I bought the coverite trim iron. everything went beautifully then I used the covering iron to shrink.. (my heat gun has already given up) I lingered too long over one spot on the elevator and.... a big hole.
This whole thing has been one screw up after another.
I burned up the cheep brushless I ordered by putting a prop that was too big on it.. (I was trying to discover my battery life)
I ordered a watt meter on amazon and forgot to make sure it wasn't coming to me on a slow boat from china... which it is.
on
and
on
and on
It seems I have broken and reconstructed this thing several times. Anytime I have to apply any pressure to anything, I wand up breaking something else.
I have covered this thing several times do to having to fix things that I have messed up.
I Believe now that I am nearly complete and I am pretty sure it will fly fine, And I don't think that most people can tell just how many times I broke repaired and redid stuff...
I guess the question is...
Am I the only one who seems to do things like this? I keep telling myself that I am supposed to be good at this kind of thing, but I just am starting to feel a little inferior.
hmmm
Can't wait to start another project... Maybe I won't have to build this one 3 times.