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

The Wings by Trevor & co.

In the Bag

Unfortunately we never took photos of the polystyrene cutouts so I will try and explain what we did, after cutting out the polystyrene and giving it a light sanding,we joined the wings together and filed a groove along the wing on the C.G. big enough to put a carbon tube about 8mm in diameter and a length of 20cm along each wing. We then put 3 60g carbon toes on top of the carbon tube and along the whole length of the wings. Once all had dried and before bagging we put microbaloons in to fill in all the holes.

We polished the thicker mylar and panted it in our colours using the Ford Focus Orange and a pearl purple for Trevor, two blues for Wes and a lemon yellow with purple for Kobus.

I was very apprehensive when I bagged the first wing but was pleasantly surprised when it came out the mylar, I think for my first time bagging they came out perfect.

Only the fuselages to complete and will keep you posted.

Chat again

Trevor, Kobus & Wes