Back together, with a little help from my friends

Building foam RC airplanes: not as hard as I imagined

After last week’s unexpected grounding of my beloved Horizon Hobby T-28 in a cotton field, it was time to do a bit of repair work. Although the plane was in better shape than I would be after a nose dive from 300 feet, the the sad fact of the matter was that the wings had several holes, the cowling was shattered, and the fuselage was split down the middle.

Although several members of the Dexter Barnstormers RC club assured me that it would not be too much trouble to put things right, one big problem stood between me and the Trojan’s return to flight. I had no hands on experience with foam airplane repair.

As a relatively new RC pilot, all of my planes so far have come from ARF kits. While old-time RC craftspeople would understandably be disgusted by my ignorance, after crashing my Apprentice while learning to fly, I simply swapped out the broken wings for new ones. It was more expensive, but the truth of the matter is that my free time is relatively limited, and I simply prefer flying to building.

Baby steps as an RC mechanic

This time around I decided to step outside my comfort zone and learn how to repair the plane. Barnstormers club member David Charles volunteered to be my tutor. He assured me that this would be far easier than I expected. (He was right.) All I had to do was go over to his place and he would walk me through the process.

The first thing that surprised me when we got started is that he did not pull out some expensive RC specific adhesive. He handed me a bottle of white Gorilla glue and told me that this was going to take care of most our needs.

The initial step was using the craft sticks to wet down all the gaps and cracks. David then instructed me to then put the gorilla glue wherever damage had occurred. He explained to me that the water served as activating agent and the glue would slowly expand as it dried. I was surprised by how quickly it set up and how easy it was to work with.

While the glue was still wet, we used the crafts sticks to properly shape the wing and cowling. In places where the glue had hardened after expanding, an X-acto knife was used to carve away the excess. Although I was nervous at first to slice away bits of the plane, David reminded me the that any knife impacts could be repaired as easily as crash damage.

Within a couple hours the Trojan had essentially returned to its original glory. The only two non-repairable parts were the cowling and propeller. David provided a similar sized prop and a slightly cracked cowling was lifted off another previously damaged T-28. With a little bit of CA the canopy, pilot bust, and cowling were all back where they should be.

As an added bonus, I managed to not glue my fingers to either the plane or each other. That alone constitutes success in my book.

Ready to put my skills to the test

Weather and work life has not yet allowed me to maiden the newly reconstructed airplane. I am looking forward to that opportunity and hope that it comes very soon. More than anything, I was surprised by how straight forward the gorilla glue and foam aircraft building process is.

Although it is too early to tell whether building will become a regular part of the radio control aviation hobby for me, it feels good to have added this newfound skill to my toolbox. If nothing else, being able to make my own repairs will make the inevitable crashes far less anxiety inducing.

Huge thanks to David Charles for taking the time and effort to walk this remedial student through the airplane building process.