Warbird Information Exchange

Post of the year

_________________
Chris Henry
EAA Aviation Museum Manager

A good friend of mine asked me to build this for his friend who was an F86 pilot back in the day and a heavy Dr. Pepper drinker these days . I gotta say this is by far my favorite plane I built. Concept to completion took just under 2 weeks. Can count is right around 40. I am going to build one more in diet pepsi which is mostly aluminum in color. After that, I gotta do a mig being shot up

Anyway, here are some pics...

That is just plain amazing!

Don't you mean "plane" amazing?

JLO, awesome builds!

_________________
Share your story: Rutgers Oral History Archive http://oralhistory.rutgers.edu/

Thanks for all the replies! The dr pepper plane is gone so I just had to have another one

I wanted to try to have a shiny aluminum finish. The diet pepsi is the closest I could find. I have to say, the shiny aluminum is by far the most unforgiving can to date. Every dent, ding, scratch and smudge shows up. Very very challenging.

The silver Sabre look just as good as the rest, JLO.

Would you be willing to share design/construction techniques or is it a trade secret?

-Tim

_________________
Keep 'em Flying.

lemee know which you plane you are interested in. some sets if plans are more complete than others(I always get lazy and end up freehanding).

Thanks for the plans offer but I was thinking more of a tutorial or at least some insight into how you develop the shapes and hold it all together. I've been thinking for a while now about building a Ryan PT-21 with a metal fuselage and thought maybe you could help steer me in the right direction.

-Tim

_________________
Keep 'em Flying.

When I get back from my travels I will post some of my how tos. Most of it is pretty self explanatory with the pictures. I think you will really enjoy it. It will definitely be enough to get you started.

Here is how I am currently doing the fuselage. The cross sections have alternating tabs. I use lots and lots of hot glue.




My wing construction has changed a little. In the photos below, the cans have about a 3/16" overlap. I have now changed them to edge to edge with a strip glued down the center of each joint. This is much much smoother.

Next I run two reinforcements consisting of a long folded strip secured to bottom of wing with heavy glue bead.




Next I apply bead of glue at leading edge and one at the rear.



The horizontal and vertical stabilizers are typically double or triple layered.

This certainly covers the very basics, let me know if you would like to see anything else you would like to see.

You skipped the step where you drink all that pop!

Actually, I have dumped all of it down the drain. I will be sure to document that step next go round

I sure hate being old. I miss the days where I could have drank it all without becoming a big fat tub of lard. hehehehehehehe...those were the good ole days.

i did not need to know that.

_________________
You can't see me!!

Thanks for the peek inside your planes JLO, I've filed it away for when I build mine.

-Tim

_________________
Keep 'em Flying.