Rob Powell wrote on Jan 7^th, 2021 at 3:45pm:


Rob, are you familiar with Cliff Harvey over there across the pond? He has a YouTube channel. Tell him, Dave, says HI.

Looks great. 
Have you corrected the warp in the old glider's wing?  We used to use steam from the tea kettle to twist the wing back into shape.  Then pin to the board again for a day or so to hold the proper shape!

The new rc version looks great!  Nice to have the sanding belt you have to assist in sanding.  I don't have that luxury.

Rob, really nice job. Stitched hinges, way cool.

Ta Dah !

And more !

(Sandy, sandy !)

It would appear to have worked !

I can post pictures - 

More to follow - 5 at a time and apologies if they are a bit out of order.....

OK - I built an original Dominette from a Veron Kit in c. 1994 for my nephew to chuck around in the garden,
I didn't put too much effort into it at the time and it must have had about 10 hand launched flights before being stored out of sight and forgotten about. I found it again when I cleared my parents house and it has been sitting in the loft for another 10 years or so and finally curiosity got the better of me:

Imagine the scene - holes in the unpainted tissue, pretty awful warp in the wing (especially the left hand one)

So do I chuck it out or repair it?

Well I tend to fly bigger and more serious rc gliders these days, mostly on the South Downs in the UK and I started to wonder if I could get some rc in the Dominette.....

They say pictures are worth a thousand words, so this will turn into a picture story in a minute (Im hoping my previous inability to load pictures to this website will have been cured by me sending pics from my phone to my Mac and then accessing them.... fingers crossed)

Salient points / points to note:

Original plane had 1/16 sheet tail surfaces - I have ended up laminating the rc version from 1/16 sheet with a 1/64 profile ply centre, sanded down to c.3/32 overall - I knew this was going to make the tail heavy, but I included the ply to:
1 be able to get a thin and straight edge to the tail set (ding-proof, too)
2 have something solid in the middle to stop the planned sewn hinges pulling through

R/C is included in 2 hatches on the left side of the pod - 1 hatch under the wing houses the servos (rescued from an old depron indoor powered plane)  and the front holds a 4 cell 300mAh NiMh battery (Dreamflight Alula battery) and a Chinese special 4ch DMSS (JR) receiver.

The plane was reconstructed in stages starting with the wing as I wanted to be sure I could get the warp out of it - Old tissue off  (cut out around structure, torn off where possible and sanded back a little) some additional structure was added - hard balsa top spar, 1/16 spar webs for the centre 6 rib bays and some carbon TOW added under the bottom spar to make it R/C and Rob-landing proof........ (you can feel the weight being added !)

OK - Fuselage - tail set was unceremoniously hacked off and the respective gluing areas sanded back. rear spar of tailplane was laminated with the 1/64 ply strip in the centre to take the sewn hinges the rest fabricated to match the original profile (in hindsight I could have reduced the chord as the f/f stability shouldn't be so essential now....At least, this way it keeps the original silhouette accurate....

Elevators are from sheet joined with scrap wire and sanded to section.

Pushrods are approx 0.8mm carbon running in tube.