Mikes Jarts No 2,3

With the local gliding scene moving to the thermal competetions there has been a break in Jart activity.

The sucess of my red Jart has prompted me to build 2 more, my son has his eye on one , so I am glad I bothered to make a mould.

I spray the moulds and , during other layup projects I use the off cut glass cloth , that comes from wing layups were the roll is cut at 45 degrees and there are big off cuts. I then build Jart and other fuselages.

Will post progress of these two as I go

later.

Mike's Jart

Well back from Volksrust , and maidened the JART successfully, a group of us went down for 4 days and generally the wind seemed to really pick up in the afternoons.
The first day the wind was ok for Zaggi flying but just not enough for the JART.
Thursday produced better conditions on the south slope so I decided to give the Jart a go.
It went straight out and only needed two clicks of up trim, left and right was spot on.

The video shows the moment of truth , unfortunately the wind dropped after a few minutes, and the jart just could not maintain altitude , it landed about 20 mtrs down the slope but was unharmed.

In the afternoon later in the day the wind swung easterly and we flew the eastern point , great lift and the Jart was, in its element it does all the things everyone raves about , its smooth flying when it has a some speed is most impressive , it does not like to be slowed down . The landing was down wind in a bit of a rotor and it cartwheeled on landing , slitting the nose open. That evening I rejoined the split which was on the join line with some cloth and it was good to go.

Saterday saw us back on the Northwest slope this time and at about 14-00 hours the air looked Jartish ready, this flight went off all wobbly until I realised I had the max rate set on my dual rate switch for ailerons a quick flick and she settled down nicely.

This flight was excellent and I pushed the Jart a little more with rolls and loops, what made it really special was that for the first time Blake my son stood next to me flying his Zaggi totally unaided so he has pretty much gone solo. The landing was fast and smooth with only a little flare, right at the end to prevent the nose(pointy in case you havent noticed)from spiking the ground.....

conclusion its a lovely design looks great in the air and is a perfornance machine ,well worth building one.

PS I have already started no 2. and have completed the fuselage already,I will post a mini build thread as I go , not so much the construction but the enhancements to the red no 1.

cheers for now.

Jart's Maiden flights at Volksrust -Trevor & co.

Kobus, Wesley and Trevor, went down to Volksrust just after Christmas to maiden their Jarts. I was there and took a few photos of the action. Very impressive when a scratch built model is launched and flies beautifully straight off the building board. Not to mention how great these models look in the air and how well they fly. And the paint jobs on theses three Jarts are very striking. Well done to them all on a great project.

Both Trevor and Kobus flew their Jarts, but unfortunately Wesley's did not get to fly because of a problem with the ailerons movement. The photos below can tell the rest of the story.

Trevor's first with Kobus helping with the pre-flight checks and Lionel doing the launching.

Then it was Kobus' turn with Trevor lending a hand!

Joining the wings by Trevor & Co

Hi Jarters

After crossing the hurdle of preparing the fuzz, it is now ready to add the wing joiner for the wings onto the fuzz.

We took the same size hollow carbon tube as we put in the wings, and aligned the wings up on the fuselage and inserted this tube across the fuselage. The wing joiner was made out of carbon toes pulled through an aluminium tube the same side as the carbon tube used in the wings. We used caustic soda to remove the aluminum from the rod.

Once we had aligned the wings, we found imperfections in our wing-lets and had to remould and form them all over.

After much sanding and finally getting the wings lined up with the fuzz, we needed to set the incidence on the wings and the stabilizer. Using the plan as a guide line,we used and incident meter to set everything up.

As we went along, things got easier, by the time we did the 3rd plane.

Once Kobus's Jart had been set, it was now time to mask off the stab and paint the fuzzes.

(At least some progress seemed to be taking place)

Finally we started the painting.

After struggling with Kobus's painting we finally had finished the three Jarts.

We now had to finish the cutting and making the hinges on the ailerons and stab.

We cut out on the bottom of the wings for the HS125mg wing servos and put the pushrod in for the HS85mg elevator survo mounted in the front of the fuzz. We checked out the CG and had to add 160G of lead to the nose and they are all ready to fly. All three Jarts weighed between 1.5kg and 1.55kg.

When the winds picked up at about 2pm on Friday at Volksrust we Maidened our Jarts.

I was amazed at how well they moved in the sky and only trimmed out the elevator about 2 clicks of up trim and she flew straight and fast. Kobus also added a little up trim when he flew the yellow Jart. After the two flights we discussed the performance of the two planes and came to a mutual agreement that they are great in the sky and all the hard work really was worth it.

We will maiden Wesley's next time and I am convinced that his (the blue Jart) will also fly great.

Evan has some photos of the Jart in action on the slope and said he will post them soon.(can't wait)
This has been a great project and we have enjoyed learning new ways of creating and building planes using carbon and fiberglass. We look forward to another project like this one.

Regards

Trevor, Kobus & Wsley

The Fuzz (cont) by Trevor and co

Hi Jarters

The last time we spoke we were getting our fuzz's ready for undercoating and the removing of the foam, wow preparing the fuzz is a lot of hard work and sanding, but eventually got it right.

We sprayed the fuzz in mc primer, only once we had sprayed the primer on, did we realise how many holes and defects there really was, so we sprayed and patched and sprayed over and over......

I don't recommend that the wing-lets be put on while preparing the fuzz as we have, because getting everything straight and aligned is a mission. Doing this type of building for the first time really made it time consuming getting it all straight, but in the end after all that hard work we decided to cut them off of Kobus and Wesley's fuzzes.

Finally we got all the fuzzes sprayed and undercoated and decided to create the canopy now before opening up the fuzz and removing the foam from the inside.

To create our canopy, we were privileged to have Kobus in our team to make a plastic mould from one of his moulds from another plane.
We took this mould and polished the inside of the plastic and laid up some fibreglass and resin to create a canopy.

This canopy was our dummy canopy to cut out on the fuzzes.

Once we had tested and made sure that this canopy fitted snug on the fuzz, we then used the same mould and laid up 3 canopies with 2 layers carbon(96g cloth).

Once we had the canopies done,we put them on the fuzz in the correct position and drew a line around the canopy on the fuzz as our cut line.

Trevor's fuzz was the dummy run and the cut out was the same size as the canopy, but Kobus decided to cut his out smaller and allow his canopy to overlap the fuzz (This turned out to be the better option).

After removing the cut out it was time to clean out the fuzz with petrol. We were all looking forward to this because at this stage all our fuzzes were quite heavy.

To our amazement only about 30g, if that, was taken off the overall weight. It was now starting to take shape because we could start attaching the necessaries for the wings.

On our next postings we will follow up on joining the wings.

Regards
Trevor, Kobus & Wesley

All I want for Xmas is a RED HOT Jart.

Well after not falling for the reindeer food that I set out for Santa on Christmas eve, I manage to contact the overworked guy to stop in on Boxing day before his long flight back north. He showed me his empty reindeer food bag (as you can see in the picture below).




However I quickly re-fueled it for him (hoping to score some brownie points) and hoping that he just might have one more Jart left amongst all his empty Christmas bags. But alas there was nothing.


There was one bag though, that looked quite full and rounded in the right places. He said that I can gladly keep this although it might not fly to well.



So I offered to look after it (hoping to score some more brownie points). He also gave me his Shotgun and some cartridges and said that I might need it in the process, as nobody is going to Hi Jack a Santa with a empty sledge on his way home.


Not wanting to disappoint the dear old fellow, I agreed to all his terms and conditions and soon he was on his Sledge and with afterburners glowing Red Hot (sounds familiar) he disappeared into late night sky. A happy fellow with his work done for the year.


Obviously I was disappointed at not getting my Jart for Xmas but I could not wait to see what he did given me for Christmas. So I rushed inside and this is what jumped out the bag!!!

Anyway, I am quite happy with this present. Don’t get any ideas guys. Remember the Shotgun!!!.


I will just have to compete my Jart in the New Year seeing as how Santa couldn't help!

Wishing all Jartists a Happy New Year.


Piet.

email from Julian Kent (aka minifly on RCGroups)

Just to let you know, I think I was the first person to complete a Jart in SA. My Jart flew at Hermanus 2006, and despite its extreme nose-heaviness and me pulling the spoilerons a moment early, managed to get a decent shot at the spot landing. Aragon got some video...I'm quite sure it's on RCGroups somewhere. It is now a very ugly, beat up Jart (I built it by layering wide-weave FG over EPS, with a balsa sheated EPS wing), so I'll probably give it a complete makeover one of these days.