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This article is intended to document my experiences building a Dave Norman designed Seeker Q500. I made first contact with Dave via e-mail and the various racing forums. From the start he has always been very open with his racing experience and tricks of the trade, and let me tell you he has plenty. I met him in person at a race in Elk River, MN in July of 2004. Dave called for me the entire day and I learned a lot about going fast. I returned to Elk River in October of 2004 and this time Dave offered to let me stay at his place. We wanted to fly against one another after 3 months of bench racing. We had 2 awesome stacked up, heart racing, heats that day. That night after a hearty meal and a few Rolling Rocks we headed back to his house. I had ordered a Seeker kit and he happened to have a new Vargas sparred wing and fiberglass tips. He cut me a heck of a deal and then proceeded to build the fuse and lay up a set of glassed tail feathers. What a guy, don't get a big head Norman. This build article starts from this point. The parts for the Seeker are laser cut from quality balsa and ply. The fuselage design has influence from the leading composite Q500's, inlcuding the Vortex and Neme-Q. However, this woodie can be purchased for a significant cost savings if you're willing to put in a little building time. At one point during our exchanges, Dave mentioned he had given Jerry Bednark a Vortex as a Christmas gift. I thought that sounded like a very kind gesture. Trying to keep up, as usual, I decided this would be my brother's Christmas present. He graduated from Kansas State in December, hence the purple paint and the white power cat on the center section. Norman's complete instructions can be view here: http://www.lcsperformance.com/seeker/seeker.html Here's how I finished Brian's Seeker up. V-tail with Skinned Hinges The first task for me was to sand the extra glass off the tail. This is can be easily done with a sanding block and simply sand the glass till it falls off the imbedded 1/64" ply leading and trailing edge. Next I cut the tail in half, Dave lays them up as a single piece to keep them straight and it allows him to do the top and bottom with one lay up process. He laid a 2" piece of Kevlar over the hinge line on the top surface of the tail. This allowed me to use a skinned hinge. I followed Bill Vargas's steps from his NMPRA article located here: http://www.nmpra.org/Documents/Skinned-hinges/Vargus/v-tail-hinges.html
Mounting V-tail to Fuselage I cut a 3/16" recess in the fuselage, this was a mistake I believe since it's not in the instructions, still worked out. The top of the fuselage is parallel to the thrust line (0 degrees incidence) and was used as a reference. I used my Robart incidence meter and a bubble to adjust the incidence of the tail to match the wing. Make sure to use the bubble on your Robart meter. I used medium CA to glue the tail to the fuse. I laid a 3/4" piece of 3/4 oz. glass cloth over the joint between the fuselage and tail. I secured the glass cloth with thin CA.
Mount Motor and Landing Gear I got out of sequence on these steps. It is easier to get your blind nuts positioned on the landing gear block and fire wall prior to reinforcement.
Reinforcement of Fire Wall, Landing Gear Block, Wing Blocks Dave recommends chopped carbon fiber and epoxy for this step. I didn't have chopped carbon so I went with epoxy and cabosil. If you wet your finger with water, you can sculp very nice fillets.
Prepare Wing Hard Points Install the 5/8" dowels in the wing for hard points. Drill holes through the dowel before putting them in the wing. Use the drill bit for the 1/4 - 20 tap. This makes drilling the holes in the mounting locations very easy. Round sand teh 5/8" dowel to the approximate shape of the airfoil. Make sure to drill the 5/8" hole perpendicular to the top the wing. This assures the counter sunk screws fit properly. I then glassed the top and bottom of the center section with 2 oz. glass clothe and Z-poxy finishing resin. Dave recommends only glassing the bottom.
Servo Installation Mount your servos and run push rods. I use 5/32" OD carbon tubes for push rods. Lyle showed me a trick here. He uses his z-bend pliers to create small crimps in the wire to take up some of the extra space inside the push rod. Then use medium CA to secure the wire in place, I also rough the wire up with 100 grit to help adhesion. On the other end, drill a 1/16" hole about 1" from the end to allow the glue to flow into the hole. Mounting the push rods is much easier without the top and bottom sheeting in place. Mounting Wing Tips I used a 1/8" pieces of balsa flush with the end of the glass wing tip. I secured this with thin CA. I then secured the wing tip assembly to the end of the core with thin CA and a fine tip on the bottle. The idea here is to glue the 1/8" rib to the balsa wing sheeting. Melting a little foam here is fine in my mind since the foam has vertially no tensile strength.
Mounting Wing I held the wing down with a 8 lb. dumb bell. Mark the center of the wing and the center line of the fuselage. Measure out 24" from the center line mark of the wing and make another mark on each side. Use these lines for final alignment of the wing by measuring to the tail of the plane. Adjust the wing position till the measurement for each side is exactly the same. Drill the 1/4-20 bit pilot hole in one leading edge hole location and then tap. Run a bolt down the hole and then remeasure before drilling and tapping a hole opposite the first on the trailing edge. Finish the other 2 holes and counter sink with a 82 degree counter sink bit. Dave recommeds 10-24 bolts for the back holes.
Sheet Fuselage I laid a bead of medium CA on the fuse sides and then placed the laser cut sheeting in place. Hold it in place and use thin CA to keep everything in place. I ran my antenna tubes, throttle tube, and fuel system before putting the front lite ply sheet in place. Attach the wing before gluing the top hatches and sheeting in place.
Rough Sand Fuselage Use a razor plane to remove the extra balsa sheeting and then block sand. I purchased a Perma-Grit sanding block and have been very happy with it. I've had it since March of 2004 and never had to replace the paper, because there is no paper. They're a little pricey but well worth the cost in my mind. http://www.bvmjets.com/Tools/permagrit.htm I laid a piece of 3/32" balsa over the v-tail joint and sanded this piece to match up with the top sheeting.
Skinned Aileron Hinges I followed Norman's shinned aileron hinge article published on the NMPRA website: http://www.nmpra.org/Documents/Skinned-hinges/Hinges.htm The variations I used was to use thin CA to glue the 1/16" caps in place. I also used medium CA to glue the .010" glass hinge material in place. Finally, I used a the Dremel router attachment and router bit to recess the area for the .010" hinge material.
Filling and Final Sanding I used Easy Sand/Icing bondo to fill the larger imperfections and sanded with 100 grit. I then mixed up sheet rock mud and water in my hand. Smear this messy concoction over the fiberglased areas, this is a light and fast way to fill pin holes and cloth weave. I final sanded with 320 on my orbital sander.
Finishing and Painting This turned out to be some what of a challenge. Initially I covered the entire airplane with a material called OZ covering. This material can be painted over and is light and fast to apply. It goes down with an iron just like Monokote.
This took no time to get the plane ready for paint. The material went down nice and had good adhesion. Here's where the fun began. I wiped down the entire plane with Acetone as recommended by the vendor. I then dusted the whole plane with primer, lightly color sanded, shot the base coat, masked and shot the trim color. When I pulled the mask the paint and primer pulled off down to the OZ covering. Not good. After many e-mails and explicatives I found out Acetone leaves a residue and was probably responsible for the problem.
Re-Finishing and Re-Painting I decided to strip the wing and fiberglass it top and bottom with 3/4 oz. glass cloth and epoxy. After the excess epoxy and glass was removed from the top and bottom, I used the watered down sheet rock method to fill the weave. Then primered and sanded with 320 grit. I also sanded the fuselage lightly with 600 grit. I shot primer on the wing and began wet sanding with 320 grit, lots of elbow grease and the surface ended up acceptably smooth. Finally, I reshot the whole plane with a darker purple and redid the graphics on the wing. This added a great deal of weight to the airframe, specically the wing. Keep in mind the primer fills well because is dense and heavy.
Yes Barley, that was a lot of work but it's for a good cause, your Uncle Brian.
Clear Coat Due to the added weight of glassing the wing, I decided to only clear the top of the wing. First I wet sanded the edges of the white with 2000 grit to removed the ridges. I'm starting to get the hang of the clear coating. Here's the technique that works for me on the wings, and the whole plane for that matter.
Installing Fuel Tank The common practice is to use a wood tongue depressor on the botom on the 5-1/4 oz. Treta tank. Space was a little tight so I used 1/32" G10 to assure the tank can't slide forward and crimp or cut the lines. I used clear duct tape to secure the G10 to the tank. I used 2 antenna tubes to run the fuel lines out the front of the plane. This is a good trick for quick fuel tank installation.
Finished Product Brian was a very happy camper and we're already making plans for the 2005 race season including the NATS. I'd like to once again thank Dave Norman for all his help and the great kit. The Seeker is an awesome woodie. So, if you get passed this year by a purple Power Cat toting, slightly beefy, Seeker you'll know who to blame. Let's go RACING!!!
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