In this episode
Join us for the main discussion, practical takeaways, and stories from this episode of RC Plane Lab.
In this episode, Ron and Tom talk about cutting and installing canopies on your radio controlled airplane, and they also discuss the ever important question of whether or not to put a pilot in your airplane!
Episode 63 Transcript
This transcript has been lightly edited for readability. Timestamps are retained.
Read the full transcript
[0:00] Hello everyone and welcome to RC Plane Lab. I'm Ron. I'm Tom. So Tom, we have a new survey. We sure do. It's brand new today. We appreciate everybody that has filled out the survey up to, this date so far. Right. And we've taken a lot of things into consideration that you guys have said, but go do it again. Yeah, it's been almost a year. I mean, really, the old survey's been out almost a year. So a lot of stuff changes in 10 to 12 months' time. So we refreshed it.
[0:36] New questions, new exciting things to talk about. Exactly. So if you haven't filled out the first survey, that's fine. You don't have to have filled out the first one to fill out this new one. And you're welcome to fill it out more than once if you want to. Like if you fill it out and then you realize, oh, I should have said this or I should have said that, totally okay if you want to fill it out again. Absolutely.
[0:57] The surveys, they help you guys by giving you what you want, but it also kind of makes our lives easier too since if we can have a more focused approach as to the topics that we decide to cover, those come from the surveys that you guys fill out for us. So yeah, go fill it out. Yeah, we appreciate everybody that has done it already. Like I said, it's very important to help kind of shape where we go in the future, because we don't know what you guys want to see
[1:24] if you don't tell us that's right and i don't want to waste a bunch of time and effort doing stuff that's just a waste of time and effort right the last the last thing i want is somebody tuning us in either on their commute to work or listening in their garage at home or at their workshop and to be like
[1:40] these guys are boring they don't talk about anything i'm interested in this is your opportunity to tell us what you would like for us to to talk about so absolutely yeah so go fill it out please please do also we have the hinging how-to episodes are finally live oh those were a lot of fun we had to do them twice i wasn't. I wasn't going to tell anybody that. But, yeah, whatever. We're human. They were better the second time anyway. I don't remember. I do.
[2:09] Because I still had some of them on my phone. Oh, it usually is better the second time because you kind of know what you did wrong the first time and moved on. But anyway, so those are live now on YouTube. Yeah, so if you don't know what they cover, it's basically just me going over the techniques I use to hinge the control surfaces on my airplanes using CA hinges and hinges that you have to epoxy in. And great fun using Ron's
[2:33] nasty epoxy, which is still here. I gave him kind of a hard time about it, but in his defense, he stores his epoxy just like I store mine. So I'm not sure why his is such a mess. I don't know what, yeah, I don't know what causes that. That is probably six or seven years old. I think I bought that when I first got into the hobby. Okay. But it has always been stored in the original bottles. It has always been stored hanging up on pegboard or sitting on my desktop or on my workbench.
[3:03] And, yeah, I have no clue. Yeah, and that's the original epoxy all over the outside of the bottles, too. It really is gross. It smells, and it gets all over your hands, and it takes forever to get it off. It might be time for some fresh epoxy. I'm not sure. But there's still like $10 worth in there. Don't just want to throw it away. Don't be such a tywad. Replace your epoxy, Ron. epoxy ron if it works it
[3:26] works just a quick note about the how to's i did abbreviate the epoxy mixing aspect of that so in the interest of time i was trying to save us a little bit of time but make sure you mix your epoxy well after watching the videos i noticed that i didn't spend a lot of time actually stirring the two components together. So read the directions, follow directions. You can't go wrong.
[3:50] Yeah, we don't want to give the impression that it's okay to mix your epoxy for 14 seconds or whatever it was. I usually stir mine for a good 30, 45 seconds, depending on how much is in there. And actually, the more that's in there, the easier it is to stir. That's true. Because it gets mixed stir. That's true. Because it gets mixed well. That's true. When you were doing those with a dot here and a dot there, that's very difficult to
[4:11] make sure you get everything mixed appropriately. Yeah, so spend some extra time doing that so you don't end up with epoxy that doesn't cure like we did on those. Yeah, but those videos are live, and they were a lot of fun to produce both times. Hopefully you guys will enjoy watching them. Yeah, and if not, that's Tom at RCPlaneLab.com. Yeah, feel free to reach out to me and tell me everything I did wrong. And that's Tom at RCPlaneLab.com. There you go. All right, you ready to move on?
[4:43] Yeah, what are we going to talk about? Let's talk about trimming and installing a canopy. All right. That's another how-to that will be coming up before too long. As demonstrated right here on this airplane we've got, in case you're watching, is right here on the table. And that is your? This is a Cloud Dancer 10, a little laser-cut kit that I built for Rob at balsaworkbench.com. That you built in like a night? Yeah, it was a surprisingly quick little build. It was fun to build.
[5:10] It was very fast. I was surprised. It would be great. I mean, I'm not really into electrics, but it would be a fantastic electric conversion. I still don't know why you're not into electrics. I mean, this thing would be perfect for that. A three-cell 2200 battery, I think, would be perfect for this thing. And who doesn't have a bunch of those laying around? Even non-electric guys like me have got a few of them. So how's the engine in this run?
[5:32] Well, I think we've covered it once before, but I haven't tried it since. So it still runs, I imagine, the same as it did when I got frustrated with it the last time. Which means crappy. It's a new engine. Probably just needs broken in. I'm going to go with that. You don't have to break in electric. I'm going to go with that. Okay. But anyway, so how do you trim a canopy?
[5:58] What do you do to get it trimmed and installed? Yeah, so there's a few ways you can do it. Scissors. I used curved Lexan scissors from my old RC car days. Those work great. Depending on the material, most of these Lexan, or I'm sorry, these clear canopies are molded out of either Lexan or what's the other one? PEPG polycarbonate. That's Lexan, I think. Yeah, I guess so.
[6:23] Lexan's a brandan, I think. Yeah, I guess so. Lexan's a brand name. Yeah, but at any rate, most of them you can score with a really sharp X-Acto knife and usually kind of snap it on that score line, and that's one other way you can trim them. Okay, before you get too far in. So you were talking about the curved Lexan scissors. I have a curved pair and a flat pair, and I use those actually quite often for doing this kind of stuff.
[6:47] Would you recommend somebody buying a pair of those as opposed to doing it with like an exacto knife or a regular pair of scissors? I would. Okay. Yeah, I would, especially if, building your own airplanes is something maybe you want to continue and you're going to do it maybe more than once. Which everybody should. Definitely worth the investment to get yourself a pair of both the flat and the curved Lexan body scissors. Because it does the curved shears of the scissors.
[7:19] I think that's what they're actually called, the shear, the cutting surface. Makes it really, really handy to, or that, makes it really handy to cut a curve. And, a lot of times these canopies, they fit on top of a curved fuselage. So you need something to create that sort of curved shape. And those curved scissors are just the ticket for that. I mean, you can certainly do it without them.
[7:42] you can use an X-Acto or I'm not sure what else you would use besides scissors or an X-Acto. I suppose you could use a bandsaw or a box cutter. I think a bandsaw would be difficult just to be able to get the angle on it. So I wouldn't try that. Yeah. But anyway, yeah, I would highly recommend somebody buy those scissors because, and I don't just use them on the canopies. Like I find myself using
[8:04] those things all the time. Like if I'm making a template for something that has a curved profile i'll usually get those scissors out even if it's just a piece of paper so it's if you can only buy one of them which you should buy both but if you can only buy one yeah i would buy the curved ones buy the curved ones and then use your wife's other straight scissors well it's actually easier i think to cut i would do
[8:25] that anyway but i think it's easier to cut a curved line hold on i said that wrong it's easier to cut a straight line with curved scissors than it is to cut a curved line with straight scissors yes yeah that makes perfect sense so that's why i think it's better to yeah if you only buy one buy the curved ones but but yeah most canopies that come in kits or or arfs usually sometimes you have to trim those they will have a molded in line
[8:51] for you to follow so you just basically trim them along that line and usually you get a pretty good fit that way in the case of a of an airplane like this one where I had to source a different canopy, I just basically, it's a lot of trial and error. you trim it long and then fit it and then trim it a little bit at a time. Try not to take off too much at once. But it's basically just trial fitting, pull it off, trim a little bit, put it back on, see how it fits.
[9:26] bit, put it back on, see how it fits. And then sometimes you can use a little bit of heat to mold the canopy to get it to fit really, really nice. You want a good fitting canopy because you don't want to have to rely on the tape for the next step to hold everything in place up tight against the fuselage. So if you can get a really good tight fit of the canopy to the fuselage,
[9:41] so much the better. And sometimes you can get that by introducing a little bit of heat and kind of forming that canopy to the surface. And it's an art. I mean, it's definitely easy to heat it too much and will cause distortion. If you look closely at our dualist videos, you'll see a little bit of distortion on mine. At the back, I got a little crazy the heat trying to get that good fit yeah you'll see mine's messed up too but that's because i was not planning on
[10:09] on having it made the day that i had it made right yeah it worked out but yeah with a with a heat gun and a very judicious application of heat you can get a really nice fit like i like i did with this little guy here so we don't know if it's that nice of a fit yet. Well, that's true. We haven't taken the tape off yet. We've got the first half of the video recorded. So when you heat it up with a heat gun to kind of make it fit a little bit better, on or off of the airplane?
[10:38] It depends. If it's a really, really egregious fit where it needs a lot of heat and a lot of forming, I'll do that off of the airplane. But if it's just a minor tweaking or whatever, usually you can get away with just heating it up a little bit with it on the airplane while holding pressure in the position that you want it to get molded to, if that makes sense. That doesn't mess up the covering or shrink it or anything?
[11:02] No, I'm never usually on it long enough to get the covering on never usually I'm never usually I did say I'm usually not on it long enough for it to distort the covering with the heat so the the plastic using there and those are pretty thin anyway so it doesn't take a lot of heat or a lot of time with heat gun on it to get it hot enough yep and a good way to like a good way to sort of get used to it or kind of get a feel for how soft the plastic needs to be
[11:31] is take the trimmings from the canopy that you've already gotten trimmed off and heat them up and kind of play with them. And that will give you an idea of what you can and can't get away with. Give you a bit of an idea. It's not going to be nearly as wide. So that will heat up a lot quicker than than a full canopy would yeah because it will certainly narrow the envelope of of learning or the or it'll lessen their what am i it'll flatten the curve of
[11:55] learning so to speak yeah it's always like you guys haven't heard flatten the curve too much yeah so it'll kind of give you an idea on how it's going to react to your heat. That way, if you get it too hot, it might bubble. If you don't get it hot enough, it's not going to move and stay. Right. Yeah, it's good to play around with something that's disposable. Yeah. Before you do it on something that's not disposable. Rather than on your airplane. Right. Yep.
[12:18] But that's, once you get a good snug fit. And so I like to use, and I'll talk a little bit about this because this is kind of funny. So in my younger days, I wasn't quite as patient. It's funny how as you get older, you tend to develop more patience. It's weird because when I was young, I had no patience to sit around and wait for canopy adhesive, RC-56 in this case, to dry. Because it takes a long time for it to actually fully cure.
[12:52] So I did a lot of, I used to screw canopies on, find screws and screw them on, which, eh, depending on the airplane, may or may not look great. But I just was impatient and wanted to get flying. So the technique that I use now with age comes wisdom and patience. So now I use RC-56 or Formula 560. They're the same thing, same type of adhesive. But they do take a long time to dry or cure. So that's the method i use now but by no means do you
[13:26] have to attach your canopy to your airplane with this adhesive you can you can use screws you can use actually trim tape i used to do that way back in the day on a monocoat finish you take a little bit of say a half inch wide strip of the self-adhesive monocoat and you can actually tape the canopy to the fuselage with that tape yeah so my dualist one is glued on with super glue because i was out of time and i used some of the i'm trying to think what it was it was some
[13:59] sort of of tape or something to hold it on kind of like a decorative like matching i don't think i actually use trim but it doesn't matter vinyl maybe that's yeah you're right i use vinyl which is fine vinyl works and well it did enough for what i'm doing with it yeah so when you glue it on though like the only thing that concerns me about gluing things on what happens if your pilot comes loose ah so if you've screwed your
[14:29] canopy on you just pull the screws out pull the canopy off and easy off you go or if you've taped it on you can usually take your exacto and trim that area between the the tape and the and the canopy and pop it off that way if you've glued it on, like what I do now, in the rare occurrence that I've had to remove a glued-on canopy, usually what I do is I'll start at one corner or one area and I'll peel it up. And you can actually separate that adhesive from the monocoat,
[14:59] especially if you use a little bit of heat. Going back on, usually not as pretty because you do have that residue left over. And the residue from the RC-56 is very difficult to get rid of, especially without hurting the monocoat or the china coat or whatever happens to be underneath it. But yeah, you can usually work up an edge and then just kind of slowly work your way around that, breaking that seal and pop the canopy off that
[15:26] way. That's how I've had to do it before. Does it stay a little bit like rubbery? Like whatever that glue is? Yeah, the RC56 adhesive or Formula 560, it does. It stays kind of… Pliable? Almost like a silicone adhesive, but much stronger and maybe a little bit less flexible than a silicone like tub type adhesive that you would use to like caulk your tub or whatever yeah but it does stay flexible which is good because our canopies when we're
[15:54] flying they do flex a little bit so if you had something on there that didn't flex you'd probably be cracking glue joints and things like that and then off goes your canopy and then you're looking for a canopy out in the middle of the cornfield I guess I never thought about that, but yeah, they would move just a little bit, wouldn't they? Yeah. Probably not much, but enough to… Well, and plus in the heat,
[16:11] you have your airplane sitting out in the sun, probably, a clear canopy is not going to absorb much sunlight, but the black, in this case, the black cockpit is, so that structure underneath the canopy is probably going to move a little bit with shrinking and swelling. So you want that adhesive at least a little bit flexible to sort of do that without creating waviness or whatever in the canopy. So the technique is really, really simple.
[16:37] A small bead of RC-56 or Formula 560 all the way around the bottom edge of the canopy where it contacts the covering. I like to use tape. You'll see it in the video. I create an outline of where the canopy sits on the airframe so that if there's any extra adhesive that kind of oozes out, it gets on the tape and not on my covering. Then when I peel the tape off, I peel off the squeeze out and then there's no cleanup that way
[17:05] but basically just a small bead and it doesn't take much of that adhesive on the canopy set the canopy in place tape the canopy down real good and then let it cure that's really all there is to it and you said it takes a long time to cure it does what define a long time so a long time to me 20 years ago was 10 minutes but but the rc56 glue it takes overnight for sure and then sometimes you'll still if you if it's on a see-through part of the
[17:35] canopy it'll actually still look milky sometimes 36 48 hours later so i give it at least a few days hours later. So I give it at least a few days, at least until it doesn't look milky anymore on the areas where I can see the adhesive. It's kind of, it actually looks like Elmer's glue. The adhesive does, it has kind of a white translucent look to it until it's fully cured. And then when it's fully cured, it's completely transparent. Okay. That's what I was going to
[18:03] ask. So, know it's cured when it becomes clear exactly okay yep and then and then yeah once it's once it's cured peel off the tape and then you can trim your canopy with like i'm gonna show i'll just be using pieces of vinyl cut down to size to make it kind of give it a framework of of sorts to sort of hide that glue joint, and off I go. And so when you do that, do you do anything like on the top or like the front of the canopy too?
[18:31] Yeah, like so on this canopy, it's a P51 canopy, and it has the P51 framework kind of molded into it. I'll just take the vinyl tape and kind of cover those areas where the framework is, and then I'll trim it with an X-Acto and make it look like framework. So why don't you do that on the inside? You can. You absolutely can. You can also paint it on the inside. That's certainly one way to do it, too. I like to use vinyl because
[18:54] it's cheap and easy and quick. Those three things I'm a big fan of, too. I like stuff that's self-adhesive. You just said you were, as you got older. I am more patient. You're more patient now, but now it's cheap, easy, and quick. But after I've already waited three days for the adhesive to cure, I'm done waiting at that point. I guess that's true. That's true. That and like RC car bodies and stuff come with like the removable saran wrap or whatever protective film on it. Yeah.
[19:23] I've not seen one of these come with that yeah not to the degree that the car bodies usually and car bodies used to come with their own masks too remember yeah we'd apply those in these canopies I've never seen an aircraft canopy come with a mask yeah so that you could paint the frameworks and that's what I was going to say so it's a lot more difficult to do it because you have to worry more about overspray
[19:43] and all that which we didn't have to with right cars exactly but anyway but like i said this that's certainly not the only way to mount a canopy that's the way i like to mount them because it's nice and clean you don't have any screw heads sticking out into the into the airstream and like i said it does take a little bit of patience to do it this way but in my opinion it yields the best look anyway sticking out into the airstream.
[20:09] Does that really, I mean, like, is that really going to make any difference? I mean, honestly. Probably not. I was going to say, I wouldn't think you would notice anything whatsoever. Probably not. But now with all the stuff that hangs off these airplanes anyway. Well, that's true. Push rods, mufflers, fuel tubing, all kinds of, yeah, all kinds of paraphernalia. Needle valves, like on this one. But anyway, I like the clean look of using the adhesive. But by no means is that the only way.
[20:35] I would recommend if you're going to use screws to hold your Campion, wherever those screws go into, I've got a cool little trick that I learned a long time ago. You take a piece of golden nairod, which is like the push rod the inner push rod stuff the yellow stuff like what's on that like the what like the nai rod it's nylon control rod nai rod sullivan makes it i'm not familiar dubrow makes it okay yeah you've seen that stuff now that you pointed out i know what you're
[21:04] talking about but i've never worked with it oh well it. Yeah, you've seen that stuff before. Now that you pointed it out, I know what you're talking about, but I've never worked with it. Oh, well, it's a plastic inner pushrod that slides in an outer pushrod tube, if you're familiar with that. You can take pieces of that inner tube, cut it in, say, eighth inch, maybe three sixteenths, whatever lengths,
[21:22] drill a hole into the fuselage, wherever your screws are going to go into, and that will sort of act as a bushing when you glue that into that hole for that screw to go into. So now you have something a little bit more solid than just balsa or light ply or whatever. And you can use that, putting the screw in and taking it out over and over if you need to for whatever reason. It's a lot better than just putting a screw right into the ball so because usually where the
[21:48] canopies mount on our airplanes there's not a lot of structure or or backing so gluing a piece of that nairod in there where the screw goes and the screw goes right through the center of the nairod and that acts like a nice bushing and protects the hole. I did that on my Contender and it's, that Contender is 20 plus years old. It's held up well. So just for clarification, whatever diameter of that you use,
[22:11] so it's a solid rod. Well, it's a rod that is, has a, it has a hole, down the center designed to accept. Okay. So it's like a, like a straw already. Yeah. Okay. Kind of like a straw. Yeah. And then you drill out the outside diameter usually it's an eighth inch that's usually what those are roughly so you put an eighth inch hole in the fuselage exactly and then you glue that in exactly okay i gotcha yep and then like i said
[22:35] that acts kind of as a bushing to protect the threads works really really well if you decide to screw your canopy on i highly recommend that little trick that's a good idea and then it's also kind of vibration proof exactly yeah because it's nylon and it absorbs vibration and stuff sure yeah yep and if you make your holes a little bit oversized in the canopy then you also have that room for expansion and contraction with that comes with temperature changes what
[22:59] kind of screws do you use on that i believe not i use servo screws the little phillips head with the with the washer kind of thing molded in, because that gives it a nice surface area, a lot of surface area to bear down against the canopy. And those are the screws I use. Now, I'm going to further quantify that and say, don't use the ones that have the non-threaded shoulder on them, because obviously it's only
[23:23] going to go in so deep where the threads, and then you've got all this screw sticking out so use the fully threaded ones there there's several different I think high-tech the screws you get with high-tech servos I think those are fully threaded but at any rate you don't have to use those but any kind of self-tapping short screw will be just fine look on look on eBay servo screws. You can find them very cheap. And that's what I've used for years. I like the ones that have the
[23:49] hex head as opposed to the Phillips head. I actually use those to mount servos too because they work so nice. I think we bought four or five different sizes and styles. And like 200 of each. Yeah, I think we got them from Amazon actually. I think that's where I got my last batch. and they're black anodized or black oxide coated or so they're they look really really trick trick again there we go so anyway that's that's how i do my
[24:16] canopies and then like i said a little bit of vinyl trim or paint if you want to paint the the canopy framework finishes it up nicely now the very very very important question this is an important question i mean this is this is like divisive it is it it's there's a lot of there's a lot of heated discussions everywhere you pose this question are you ready pilot or no pilot yeah so i mean that is
[24:49] the question right and so many variables but man you get a crowd of rc guys rc airplane guys together and you pose that question it could be a wild ride it It might turn into fisticuffs. It might. There's a lot of people that feel very strongly about the subject. So I'm a to-eat-your-own kind of person. Me too. But personally, there has to be a pilot in there. I also prefer a pilot. Now, prefer or have to have a pilot? I own airplanes that do not have pilots in them.
[25:27] With clear canopies? With clear canopies, even. Oh, man. I know. I know. I just, I don't know if I like that. I know. I don't know if we can be friends anymore. By and large, if it has a clear or at least a translucent canopy. Smoked. I like to have something in the cockpit, either a pilot or some sort of character, something.
[25:52] Now, obviously, on a completely opaque, like a black, you've painted it black or whatever, then I'm okay with not putting a pilot in there because you're not going to see it. Yeah. putting a pilot in there because you're not going to see it yeah but yes i do own i do own a couple well probably more than a couple of airplanes that do not have pilots in them and they have clear canopies yeah so actually if i remember right like if you do imac or anything like that you have to
[26:15] have a pilot in in to fly in there i think so yeah so that's that's how it should be there has to be pilots now what what do you like to use for pilots? Do you do anything? I use anything. Yeah, I'm not really all that particular. And let me rephrase that. It depends on the airplane. But like on most of my sport airplanes, it's whatever I can find that looks the scale, looks about the right scale.
[26:41] If it's a stuffed animal from the dollar store, then it's a stuffed animal from the dollar store then it's a stuffed animal from the dollar store yeah when my kids were little yeah you decapitated i would decapitate their toys to put a pilot in my airplane now obviously on a on a scale like eventually when i finish my swap with camel that's going to have an actual world war one pilot really yeah you're not you're not going to have an actual World War I pilot. Really? Yeah.
[27:06] You're not going to put stuffed animals in the tri-motor? We're not going to have like… Well, we can put whatever you want in the tri-motor. No, I want that to be scale. Okay. But yeah, for the most part, if I'm putting a pilot or a character in my airplane, it's whatever I can find. I just went to the dollar store the other day, and loaded up on forkeys nice they had some smaller they're probably two or three inches tall which are fine
[27:30] for a smaller airplane yeah they were a dollar a piece and i bought a couple of those i bought the the what is it rex or the dinosaur from from that is it grew i think grew from oh what was that movie despicable me yeah there we go and yeah they had a bunch of them so i loaded up so i'm i'm good actually for quite a while yeah yeah oh and some minions i got a couple minions yeah i've seen a few of those on the on the
[27:59] internet so but yeah like for the duelist i was it was getting down to the wire and i had to have a pilot in it so i actually found that pilot at the local what's the name of the store goodwill oh yeah they have a toy section i never even thought of looking there yeah yeah for i think it was i think it was a dollar 99 cents and it was a pretty good looking pilot actually
[28:21] it's kind of it was on some nascar thing and it's this big helmet with the dark face shield and flames on the side. It actually looks the part. It looks like it's meant for it. It does. Unlike the stuff I put in mine. Yeah. So wherever you can find a pilot, if it's got a clear canopy, Ron and I agree, it needs to have something in there. Yeah. So if you send us pictures, send us pictures of the pilot.
[28:44] It better have a pilot in it. No, do whatever you want, but it has to have a pilot. How do you mount your pilots? Well, it depends. So sometimes I glue them and sometimes I put them on a servo and stick it up to the rudder. I was hoping you would mention that because that is really cool actually that was a last minute idea that i had when i was doing the the the duelist i think it turned out okay it turned out awesome are you kidding me longevity i don't know because there
[29:15] was a lot of engineering that had to go into it that in let's just say it was questionable on the in-flight video where you zoom in and you see him turn his head as he does the stall turn or whatever and that that was so awesome yeah i think i want to do that more more than not actually because that's easy to do i mean it doesn't cost a lot of money because it didn't really add that much weight either it was the cheap servos just like
[29:39] you said so yeah yeah if i thought it turned out really, really cool. Little nine-gram servos that we know now weigh nine grams. Nine grams. Yeah, so, no, I thought that was pretty fun. And it depends on the pilot you have on how you would do that. Yeah. Forky was easy because the whole fork can turn. But the Duke Kaboom guy put in there, I actually had to drill out and take his head off. And then put a another
[30:05] decapitation put a skewer down in it to hold it to the actual servo yeah so yeah but it was fun i mean it turned out really cool part of this hobby is just playing around and doing silly things it's a big part of this hobby it really is if it's something we get a lot of our our enjoyment of it yeah i mean doing the same thing over and over can get kind of boring so yeah it's fun to push the the limits push the
[30:30] boundaries see what you can do and if it doesn't turn out don't tell anybody about it and move on i have a lot of stories that i'm not going to talk about yeah but for mounting them same thing i usually resort to either epoxy or Shoe Goo. Shoe Goo is an adhesive that stays kind of flexible. But usually I try to, if I can, I try to make it so that they're screwed in, so that if I ever do need to remove them for whatever reason, they're easy to just unbolt and go.
[31:01] But yeah, they do need to be secured. Very much. And a lot has to do with, what they're getting glued to. Yeah, they do need to be secured. Very much. And a lot has to do with what they're getting glued to. Yeah, what you have to work with. It depends on how the bottom of your cockpit is constructed. Like if it's painted, it's, I think, a little bit less important to screw it because it's really going to stick well to it. If it's monocoat or something
[31:21] like that, then glue will stick but not as well. So I would probably put some screws through it, if you can. Sometimes you can, depending on what the pilot is, too. Some of them that I've used before are literally hollow shells that have no base in them. Yeah, that's how the helmet was for the dualist. Now, did you cut something to go underneath of it then? I cut a piece of balsa to fill in the void at the bottom of the head. And then glued that to the head?
[31:50] And then I glued that straight to the cockpit floor of the duals because it wasn't covered. It was painted. Well, how did you connect the balsa that you cut to go underneath the pilot? So I epoxied it. Oh, okay. Because it was a fairly hard plastic pilot it's not going to move around it's not like it was made of rubber or anything like that so i just cut a piece of ball so to fit up in that void where i chopped the head off the toy
[32:17] because it was hollow yeah but yeah i just cut a piece of ball so to fit in there tried to make it fit as good as i could and then I epoxy that in, let that cure, and then I epoxy the whole shebang to the cockpit floor. The whole shebang? The whole shebang. Okay. Well, anything else you want to talk about? No. If it's got a clear canopy, put something in there for us. But it doesn't have to be a real pilot. No, it can be
[32:40] anything. It can be forky. what would be really cool is if you took a picture of yourself and then printed that and put that in there. That's better than nothing. Yeah. I actually would like to 3D print ourselves for the tri-motor. That would be pretty cool. I have 3D printed a Pilot before. Yep. But it was just one that I found on Thingiverse. It wasn't anything I designed or spent time on. Yeah.
[33:09] But it was nice and light, so it worked out well yeah cool okay well then here you go
[34:04] canopies and and pilots that's all until next time i'm ron and i'm tom good night ДИНАМИЧНАЯ МУЗЫКА Thank you.
