Well, folks...as promised, the beast is back!
Before I attach the lower wings there are still a couple of things that need doing. The first of those was tackled today.
Exhausts. 24 of them. I bought some Albion Alloys aluminium tube of 0.6mm od and 0.4mm id specifically for this job. All I had to do was find a way to cut it into 4mm lengths, with one end cut at an angle....and keep them all the same!
After thinking a while, I remembered Des' tip for cutting lengths of rod so I decided to make a little jig. I first marked a drill bit with tape so I knew how deep to drill....
Then I found a piece of scrap suitable for the jig and drilled the hole. The angle I needed was marked with a permanent marker, and the corner of the piece of scrap was carefully sanded back to the mark....
Insert tube, cut with a PE saw, and see if it works......
After a bit of fine tuning, and making sure the tube was fully inserted every time, it was actually a fairly quick process once I got going.
24 exhausts! Not all absolutely identical, but I sorted out the longest and the shortest and put them together so the differences won't show once they're all mounted.
After that I realised that the inner engines had been mounted slightly too far back, so those were removed and positioned correctly. They have to be spot on as the middle pair of exhausts bracket the struts, and the exhausts are longer than the gap between the engine and the struts so if it's wrong, the exhausts won't fit, they'll hit the strut!
Here's hoping it's now correct.
The next task is to finish the cooling systems, which means fabricating the 4 radiators (the ones I made earlier are too small so I'll make new ones), and the reservoir tanks and fittings.
See you soon!
Ian
