Bill Evans Simitar .45 Size Electric Conversion

[msatin]

I came across a gas powered Simitar for sale on RCCanada a few month ago, and was intrigued by the fact that this aircraft did not have a horizontal stabilizer.
After some searching, I found a kit supplier who offered a number of variations of the Simitar in short kits, with available Foam Core wings to be sheeted in 1/16" balsa. (You can see the foam in the top right corner of the Pic 1.)
I selected the Pole Star, and will power it with an 890W 770kv motor.
In chatting with Frank, he also decided to build this model, but is designing and constructing built-up wings.
Because of my building skills (or lack thereof) Frank will be guiding me through this build. He came over to my house and we built the 2 fuselages together. As he pointed out, Bill Evans was a "minimalist" when it came to building, so the parts count is very low!
You can follow his build here:
https://temac.ca/smf/index.php?topic=8918.0

A video of a number of different Simitars:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=u9HQtMfNJKU

I should have the fuselage and motor placement done tomorrow, and will continue to post pics as we progress.

[msatin]

Building continued with the completion of the fuselage.
It required turning a a box into an oval.
I did this using a mini planer, which for the most part went well.
Unfortunately I took a little too much off the top of the front section which weakened that area.
To fix this, I cut a strip of wax paper and fibreglass cloth (FGC) to fit inside this section. I covered the wax paper in epoxy, then laid the FGC on the wax paper, and added more epoxy on that to make sure it was completely saturated.
This method allowed me to slide the strip inside the fuse, and with the help of bbq skewer, position it just where I wanted it.
That section is now extremely strong

[msatin]

With Frank's help, sheeting the foam core wing with 1/16" Balsa is next.
The foam wing itself is "sandwiched" between 2 pieces of foam which acts as a cradle while the epoxy is curing
Pic 7 shows the upper and bottom cradle sections.
Because the epoxy is diluted with Isopropyl Alcohol, I wanted to make sure the the mixture didn't damage the foam. or curl the Balsa  so you can see a test piece of balsa
Pic 8 shows the 4 pieces of balsa which we glued together to form 1 big sheet, and then cut to fit the top and bottom of the wing

[msatin]

Using this diluted epoxy mixture we painted both the balsa sheet and foam

[msatin]

The wing with the balsa sheet is placed in the cradle and weighted down and left to cure.
The weights used were cans of of tomatoes, oil, and flour.
This way we could have Pizza and Wings 
With any luck I'll be able to post the finished wing tomorrow