Gertrude 2 – The Rebuildening

Gertrude, my beloved Radian glider, suffered a terrible mishap during a night flight and lost her entire nose. I searched and search, but wasn’t able to find them in the flying field. So it was off to the local hobby shop to order a replacement fuselage & firewall, motor, firewall, prop and spinner.

Step one was pulling all the remaining equipment – ESC, Rx, servos, etc. – from the damaged fuselage.

Getting ready for the tear-down

When I’m doing a tear-down, or any repair, I use a cigar box to keep all my bits and pieces in.

A box of parts.

A bare naked fuselage (LEDs still attached)

On to the build. Step #1 was gluing a strip of carbon fiber down the bottom of the tail boom, to give it extra rigidity side-to-side and add a bit of weight behind the CG.

CF spar disappearing under some tape.

I’m “painting” the bottom of the fuselage black, using packing tape to add color and contrast and also to protect the foam from my stubbly flying field.

Bottom ‘painted’ black

Old fuse / New fuse

The only problem so far is that none of the replacement parts came with the machine screws needed to attach the motor to the firewall. I’m stuck until I get them from somewhere.

I made two trips to the local hobby store and eventually made it home with four 3mm x 8mm 3mm x 8mm machine screws that fit just fine.

What with the tape and the carbon fiber and the LED lights and blind fate, the plane came out really tail heavy. In order to push the CG forward to an acceptable spot (70mm), I’ve had to pull the battery forward several inches into the cockpit.

I glued a small block of lightweight foam behind the battery compartment to block its sliding backwards, and modified the velcro strap to give more restraint to the front part of the battery, now swinging nearly free since it’s not nestled inside its compartment anymore.