The weather over the last few weeks has been dreadful. On the few days that were ok-ish I had other things on, so have been unable to go maiden my Moswey III. On the positive side, the many rainy days also meant that I had time to get back to my Chocofly JS3. Together with Georg Staub, our team’s designer, we fitted the JETEC E70 retractable EDF, as well as the retractable gear into the fuselages of both our JS3 (he’s also building one, identical to mine). It’s the first time we’ve done this, and was not without it’s challenges.

We were fortunate though that Dani from Chocofly was so kind to provide us with a perfectly fitting CNC cut mount for the JETEC. He also kindly supplied a perfectly moulded “spare” of the top of the fuselage, from which we could cut out the cover of the JETEC and allowed us to study and measure the installation of the JETEC on his JS3. I also made a drawing of Dani’s cutout in the top of the fuselage, which I digitised to allow me to cut both the positive and the negative template of the opening at the top of the fuselage on my Silhouette vinyl cutter (a PDF version can be found through the link, contact me if you want the version for the Silhouette vinyl cutter).

After correctly positioning the vinyl template, we used a dremel to cut out the opening for the JETEC. The correct positioning of the motor mount in the fuselage proved to be quite challenging. Georg constructed a tool that allowed us to fix the motor mount to the wing joiner to allow us to adust it to the correct position. We then fixed it on a couple of places with 5minute Epoxy Resin, before fully fixing it with 24hr Epoxy and a few strands of carbon roving. Cutting out the landing gear doors wasn’t too hard once we determined the position of the retractable gear (which was determined by the position of the JETEC). Once the whole thing was installed I cut the EDF cover to shape, again using the vinyl template, and fixed it to the top of the JETEC. A lot of work, but I’m pleased with the result.