I have been puttering around and working on planes for over a year now. Things are now coming together rapidly. I have 5 planes that are within a week's worth of work of covering. My problem now is which one to cover first. Decisions, decisions, decisions. These are the types of decisions I like to ponder over. The worst part is I'11 have to wait for spring to fly these birds.

Note - In the last issue I talked about improved wheels. Paul's e-mail address should be Paul Samaras psamaras@pcisys.net.

Ed Vollmer, of St. Joseph, MO, securely mounts his canopies using the following method. On foam hatches that are covered with balsa, Ed hollows out the cockpit area and lines the inside area with 1/16-inch balsa leaving about 1/8 inch of balsa above the sheeted hatch.

This allows for an area to glue on the canopy. After the canopy is glued on, Ed adds a fillet between the canopy and hatch.

A common method to make wing struts is to use hardwood for the struts and metal fittings that are glued into the sliced ends of the wing struts and pinned.

I like to use wire inside of the struts and silver soldered to the metal fittings. The struts can be covered with balsa or hardwood for even greater strength. This method works equally as well on 'N' struts for biplanes that are not braced with flying wires.

For ease of covering the wires, simply glue the wood to one side of the strut and then glue wood on each side of the wire on the other side of the strut and then another piece of wood on the other side. You can also cut a channel in one of the pieces and recess the wire. Then sand to shape, and cover.

When sanding ailerons to shape, you might notice that after sanding there is a gentle curve to an aileron that started out straight.

This is caused by sanding more on one side of the aileron than on the other. It is wise to sand both sides of the aileron equally to eliminate this problem.

There are several computer graphics packages that work well for designing paint schemes for our airplanes. There are two basic types of format. One is a bitmap image which is made up of pixels (tiny colored squares) which when enlarged looses its sharpness. The other type is a vectored format, which used a mathematical formula to create lines and curves. This allows the image to be sharp at any size.

I like to use CorelDraw software to design graphics and paint schemes for my airplanes. I also use it for the graphics in this column. Another advantage to using CorelDraw is that most graphics companies can import your work for custom designs. Colors can be changed by a click of the mouse. You can also print out templates full sized and create scale drawings.

Pilots always seem to ask me what I use for fillers on my planes. For wood I like to use Red Devil light spackling compound. It is a latex-based compound that sands as easily as light balsa and doesn't seem to shrink too much. It does not get very hard (similar to a hard rubber in hardness) and is somewhat flexible. I have heard of pilots using it on fiberglass but I have not tried it.

For fiberglass cowls and plastic parts I like to use Micro-lite auto body filler. This is just good ol' bondo. It dries quickly and sands easily and feathers nicely. It does leave pinholes in the finish, which requires the use of spot putty. Spot putty is thick, pasty primer. 3-M makes several types. The red spot putty is a tad runny and takes forever to dry and shrinks badly. They also make a gray and a green spot putty that is much easier to use and you will get better results. Squadron (the plastic model company) makes a green and a white putty made for plastics. These work very well and don't shrink. They are a plastic base which is just what we need. These spot putties also fill pinholes nicely and sand easily. I especially like the white because it matches plastic and is lighter on color than fiberglass.

Another thing to consider is the use of a sealer between the primer and the topcoat of paint. The sealer is thin, usually light gray, pre mixed, and is applied over the primer coat about 20 minutes before the paint. You do not sand it, just spray on and wait the 20 minutes or so. This seals the primer and hides any filler shadow that might otherwise show through.

I shy away from yellow. Painting with yellow takes many coats to cover. More coats of paint mean more weight. For this reason I have stayed away from yellow paint. I have built a Cap 232 because I loved the yellow, red and blue paint scheme.

When I started to cover the aircraft in my favorite film covering, my heart sank because I could see every grain and glue showing through the yellow film. My first thought was having to fiberglass and paint the airplane. That meant more work and more time.

After some thought I sprayed a piece of balsa with white primer and covered the piece with the yellow covering. The covering stuck to the primerjust fine and looked great. So now I had to paint the whole plane with white primer.

The painting part was easy. The primer has to be thick enough so the wood is somewhat white. The grain does not need to be filled. Sanding was more of a problem. The wood would swell slightly and the glue joints would not. There was major fuzz all over the airplane that needed to be sanded down, not to mention any and all imperfections showed up like a sore thumb. After the careful final sanding, I was finally ready to cover the plane.

The covering really did turn out very nice and the plane looked great. All ofthe extra work only added one extra day to the project. I will not hesitate doing another yellow airplane now that I have this experience.