The Chocofly Avanti fuselage is repaired, spray painted, polished and the electronics installed. It’s now ready for the (re-)maiden flight. The yellow paint came out ok – it’s a standard acrylic car paint (spraycan) that’s not too far off the gelcoat yellow of the fuselage. I managed to nicely polish the newly painted part. Unfortunately, as expected, the transition to the “old” paint will always remain visible. I’ll have the upper side of the horizontal stab painted white to match the white wings when the Monerai heads off to the paintshop.
I hope to have the maiden flight in the next few weeks. Interesting will be to also fly my Avantihawk (which uses the same pair of wings) on the same day to see the difference in performance.
The DG800 deserves some cool decals and the Avanti needs them to cover up the repairs and repainted nose. So I set myself to work. Dani from Chocofly kindly shared with me some of his plotter data for the DG800s, which I modified and adapted for our version. As we are building two of these (Georg and myself) we decided to use the same basis, with a small difference in colour – as we did with the VT-16 Orlik (red and blue). I also decided to push my Silhouette Cameo 3 to its limits by plotting smaller pieces and to try two-coloured decals. Let’s see if they will hold :-).
A few years ago I built my “AvantiHawk“, a combination of the “Duckhawk” glider from the United States with wings from the Chocofly Avanti (which are similar to the scale wings, albeit much deeper). I’ve always toyed with the idea of getting an Avanti fuselage so that I can fly the same wings with the thinner fuselage as well – ideal for handstarts.
One of my club colleagues crashed his Avanti on the slope last year (catching a tree). He destroyed the right wing and broke the nose of the fuselage. The right wing was not salvageable, but the fuselage was. He played with the idea of ordering a new set of wings, but eventually decided against it and kindly gave me the broken fuselage as well as tailplane and the left wing. Chocofly kindly provided me with the missing wing joiner and a new canopy, as well as the servos for the fuselage and motor. I’ve started fixing the fuselage, using multiple layers of 100gr glass. I’ve also inserted a new motor bulkhead and extended the fuselage somewhat, so that I can fit the new Chocofly/MIGflight outrunner for 6S and the matching 42mm Spinner (rather than the 45mm Spinner that was used before). The fuselage needs a final sanding and is then now ready for it’s final coat of paint. The components are ready to be built in once it’s painted.
The only problem is that my wings are white and the fuselage and tailplane are yellow. Respraying the entire fuselage white is usually not a good idea (you will always see that it was once yellow), but I can make the upper side of the tailplane white to match with the wings. The underside of wings and tailplane are the same blue. Also cool is that the new canopy as well as spinner and propeller are white, so I’ll probably go with a yellow-white (and blue underside) colour combination. I do however still have to find a spraycan with matching yellow.
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