Rushed Rufe

[kittyfritters]

Dave Gee reminded me on last Friday that the Put A Rufe Over Your Head contest was on Sunday the 19th. It was also a DOBAC contest where the club made a bulk purchase of kits and sold them to the members at cost. If you showed up at the contest with the model flyable you got your dough (the price of the kit) back. Dave told me that I had nothing to worry about, "It's laser cut. They just fall together." The kicker about the contest was the model could be built as a Zero. You got extra points if you built it with the floats. I'm not one of those rare modelers who has gotten it to fly as a Rufe so I decided to go with it as a Zero.

I also knew that my wife was not going to cut me any slack on the activities for the weekend. I made the agreement with her that I would get up early on Sunday morning, feed the cats and make breakfast before going to the contest. OK, I opened the box about 4:30 PM on Friday,

First I reviewed the plans and the parts sheets. There have been a few changes since I built my last one which was die cut. I was please to discover that the parts sheet had been redone for laser cutting so that it would be easier to built the fuselage straight. I located all the parts that would be needed to build it without the floats and got them out, ready to go and started framing up starting with the fuselage. Since I have a perfectly flat building board all I had to do was be careful to make sure that the formers on the left side of the fuselage were perpendicular to the keels. While normally I would build with TiteBond I would have the build the whole thing with CA to finish by Sunday. I had to stop around 6 to feed that cats and start dinner.

Rufe_start.jpg

After dinner I put another 45 minutes in and got the right side of the fuselage on using my popsicle stick and clothes pin method to make sure that the half formers on the other side lined up. Then I had to stop for evening tea.

Rufe 2.jpg

After evening tea I put the stringers on the fuselage, framed up the tail feathers, framed up the wing and got it off the board. At 11:00 I stopped to throw out the trash, set up my coffee maker for the morning, give the cats their evening treats and go to bed.

We had our bi-weekly manny-peddy scheduled for 10 AM on Saturday so we got up, fed the cats, breakfasted, showered and went to the nail salon. My wife wanted to go to a movie in the afternoon and have a late lunch/early dinner so I had and hour and a half between the nail salon and the movie to put some work in. Since I can't leave the nose of a 500 series model alone I built a nose structure under the cowl to make loading the rubber and thrust line adjustments easier. I decided to go with a box and separate nose block rather than a removable cowl since I had done this with my last Rufe and already had the measurements. If you decide to go this route according to the picture the extra reinforcement where the box meets the first former is necessary, trust me.

Rufe 4.jpg

KF

[kittyfritters]

After the movie and dinner I sanded all the parts and started covering. If I was going to airbrush it with acrylic ink I would have covered it wet but since I was in a hurry I decided to use colored tissue. The green on top was Asuka but the grey on the bottom was domestic tissue so I covered dry. I used permanent glue stick to apply the tissue. I had to stop at 9 for evening tea.

After tea I set up a jig to keep the wing from warping while it shrunk and put some 1/16" wedges under the trailing edge of the wing tips to shrink in some washout. If you do that the washout stays when you fix the tissue with dope or fixative. The tailfeathers were not shrunk to prevent warps just covered as tightly as possible. I got everything shrinking with rubbing alcohol and hoped that everything would be tight in the morning. I stopped for the usual bed time activities at 11.

Rufe 5.jpg

Sunday morning I got up at 6:30 and went to the shop to see if the shrinking was successful. It was and I gave all the parts a misting of Krylon fixative (#1311, UV resistant, matte) and went in to wake up my wife, feed the cats, and feed us. After breakfast I assembled the model and left for the contest. The other model on the bench is a Wade Wiley's Basin Flyer with a 7" Guillow's prop. (It ended up at the very top of a 40' tall tree but I got it down.)

Rufe 6.jpg

I was second in the contest and got my dough back. It was flyable with a lot of nose weight. I found out with the last one that it is actually lighter with the float since it doesn't require all the ballast but the floats don't survive landings very well. It was flyable at the contest but not finished. I will add the markings, paint the canopy frame, paint the cowl and add the control surface outlines and landing gear doors. When it's finished I will post a final picture

KF

[kittyfritters]

Just for information, I made no attempt to lighten the structure just built it out-of-the-box, with the exception of the nose block, but as a zero. All up with four strand motor, 3/32" FAI, tan, sport, about twice the hook to peg length it weighed 25 grams. I put it on my balance stand and it took 15 grams of clay to balance it! Needless to say, if I do another one I will make an effort to lighten it behind the CG. Now, at 40 grams it is not a spectacular flier but it does fly. With a bit of down and right thrust, with a 6" Peck prop, at about 600 turns I can get about 20 seconds out of it. You wouldn't want to stand in front of it, it flies fast and the glide is a bit steep but 20 seconds is enough to confirm that it actually does fly. That is better than I did with my earlier Rufe with floats, and it survives landing.

KF

[StukaDave]

I'm trying to post an image of our 2 models, can't get it figured out.
This was a pleasant 5 hour (max) build, the little plane just falls together, you're just trying to build suspense.
Bitter at finally losing a contest to me after all this time.

[StukaDave]

Here are the 2 DOBAC zero entries. Our club sells the kits at a discount, and then if you actually build and fly the model you get your dough back. In this case $10. Wad the bill up tight and tape it to the nose, you're gonna need it for ballast! https://www.youtube.com/shorts/3SGSeyhYNGk

[StukaDave]

Yes, the club does a variety of DOBAC events each year, whenever we can get a group-buy on an interesting model. We lose money on each one, but make it up in volumne.

[Ray Klein]

I really enjoyed your post on the rushed Rufe. Pretty cool! Amazing you even took the time to do a sort of build log.

[Scott]

Great Zero,thanks for the text and the accompanying pics.