Jamara Pitts S2B
- building the wings
This page of my Jamara Pitts S2B build follows on from the fuselage page of the build log.
One of the biggest let-downs of the whole kit was the balsa selection in my opinion, and some of the ribs and particularly the wing tip pieces felt like soggy cardboard they were so soft. If the ribs were solid this wouldn't be such a concern but the large weight-saving holes in each rib leave very little balsa really and as I soon found out the ribs were very easily broken by nothing more than careless handling.
Anyway, with all wing ribs removed from their sheeting and the heavy layer of carbon sanded off the edges it was time to print off the wing plan from the DVD. I didn't have the capability to print it off in one go at 100% size so I did it on four separate A4 sheets to be taped together...
Above: the four separate A4 sheets. Below: matching up the lines when taping the sheets together is best done held against a window.
Above: the A4 sheets taped together and ready for the building board.
With the plans on the board I was ready to start construction but it was at this moment that I realised some bits were missing! Yep, I had no leading edge, trailing edge or aileron l.e pieces! I triple checked the box and went through every piece of wood that came out of it, but the bits just weren't there. I e-mailed Gliders Distribution but got no reply, then by chance a new member to my forum, who was also building the Pitts, made contact with me and he was missing the same parts! Hm, something odd going on there Jamara...
He had got a reply from Gliders who had sent him a photo of the missing sheet as a reference, but by that time I had already cut out the necessary pieces from scrap balsa I had lying around. Not a big job, but certainly an unnecessary hassle.
Construction of the wings (I tackled the top wing first) was fairly straightforward with no hidden surprises, although the delicateness of the ribs was annoying and a couple got broken during the build, purely because of their weakness. One point to mention is that the struts (wing & cabane) screw through small lugs that are part of the ply ribs and these lugs obviously hang lower than the bottom surface of the top wing. As I was building on a 3" thick sheet of loft-insulating polystyrene I could accurately cut four slots in the sheet so that the lugs located in to them and the wing could then be built flat on the board.
The lower wing didn't have the strut-lug/building board problem as the lugs are obviously on top, but did have the dihedral brace and servo hatches to deal with but neither of these presented any issues at all, although it has to be said that Jamara could have been a little more generous with the area of ply that the hatch screws screw in to - the available area is not much wider than the diameter of the screw!
The final job of the wing construction was to add the 1/16" sheeting to the top and bottom front 1/3 of each wing and then the oh-so-lovely job of sanding - not my favourite job!
As with the fuselage the completed wings were of course much sturdier than the individual parts suggested they would be, and the end result was quite pleasing as far as I was concerned.
Incidentally each aileron is made from two pieces of 1/4" sheet glued together and then planed and sanded to section. The wing struts are made from two pieces of 1/16" ply, with one piece having the cut-outs for the rib lugs. When glued together the struts should sit tightly over the lugs, to be screwed in place later, but I found that I had to make a few minor alterations to the shape of the lugs and the cut-outs for things to fit nicely; one reason was because when I clamped the two halves of each strut together after gluing, the two halves moved slightly and so the original outline was lost. Unfortunately I didn't notice this slippage until after the glue had cured and I removed the clamps!
Follow the final stages of my Jamara Pitts S2B build.
