Sea Salvage and Restoration

This plane was found by my beach combing friend, Greg.  The servos and ESC (electronic servo controller) were corroded badly, but the receiver, motor, wings and fuselage were mostly intact.

There where a few broken longerons, stretchers, ribs, and leading edge of the port wing.  I ended up striping the entire air frame to reach all the repairs and to prepare the surfaces.  A telescope tripod helped steady the frame.  Tweezers and an ice cube helped release the plastic.  While a hair-dryer only acted to reactivated the adhesive.  A few scraps of balsa and a dab of CA here and a glob of Gorilla Glue there it was ready for sanding.

The battery compartment was missing so I fabricated one by tracing the battery bay and cowl curves.You can't see it here because it's missing.

The elevator was broken on the port side but the starboard side was intact to measure and pattern.  The rudder and stabiliser we both badly broken.  I looked at a few photos from the manual and online, then measured the trapezoidal corrected images.  Measurements from three images matched within 5%, so I used these proportions to recreate these surfaces.

 The fibreglass cowl was cracked and I cracked it even more trying to remove a mounting bracket that was installed backwards by the original builder.  I sanded it inside and out.  Taped on a small piece of fibreglass over the most damaged area and applied epoxy to any exposed glass on the outside.  I use a bit of CA Glue along the edges of my patch to keep it from fraying. After drying, I removed the tape on the inside and applied a thin coat of epoxy.  I filed the outside smooth, filling any pits with Gorilla Glue, drying then sanding smooth.  I coated the entire cowl with a thin layer of epoxy mixed with black iron oxide for pigment.  The tiniest amount of iron powder makes normally brittle epoxy measurably stronger.