Today I will cut out the small tissue square on top of the fuselage for the little window up there and glue on the styrene window. At this point I am ready to glue the wings on, unless I do the mask. So a call to Mike is part of the order for the day.

Oh yes, I forgot to mention that I have new wood on the top of the building board in the model room. Over time, I had cut, glued, spilled oil, and hacked the top of my building board pretty bad. This building board sits on top of a metal office table in the model room. It consists of 1/4" plywood bonded to 3/4" particle board, which is bonded to an unfinished door as shown at right. This combination is very straight and very flat, not mention heavy. As you can see, there is a 4" overhang provided for clamping work on the chair side.

I also put a final coat of clear dope on the two wing panels with the letter/numbers on. I am getting anxious to install the wings and the two associated wing struts. However, I have settle this window mask issue first.....................Tandy

This shows a right side view of the striping tape termination.

I had a cabinet maker remove the top 1/4" beat up plywood and replace it with a sheet of furniture grade 1/4" Ash plywood, which he accomplished in one day. The new top of the building board is shown at left............................Tandy

I cut out the tissue in the rectangular opening on top of the fuselage for the J-3 Cub's upper window. I cut out the styrene rectangular window with the proper overlap and glued it in place with Formula 560 canopy glue as shown below. Putting in this slightly curved window was simple after fussing with that darn windshield for several hours.

I got an interesting e-mail from Richard Adams last evening about trimming the windows on the Cub. He said to cut out single long thin yellow tissue strips and brush them onto the edges of the styrene windows and windshield with a glue mixture of 50% Titebond and 50% water.

To test this approach out, I cut some long thin yellow tissue strips and proceeded to brush the strips on a scrap of clear flat styrene. The first couple of attempts it didn't work because the tissue kept sliding around and tearing when it got wet. I finally overcame this problem and successfully got two strips glued on smooth. After letting the mixture dry, I use a damp rag to lightly clean off the excess glue mixture on the styrene. Well, this didn't work either because the yellow tissue strips came right off! The glue mixture just does not stick to the styrene.

After giving up on this approach, I decide to look into some yellow striping tape. All I had on hand was some Great Planes 1/8" width, which would not pull around a curve without puckering on the inside radius. So I took a fresh piece of this striping tape and carefully sliced it down the middle to get two 1/16" strips. I took one of these 1/16" strips and very successfully stretched it around the windshield/cowl juncture. This yellow strip tape completely sealed off the windshield around the cowl as the picture at left shows.

At this point, I am almost ready to quit while I am ahead with this window/windshield trim thing and proceed with installing the wing panels. However, the one thing I will not have accomplished, is learning how to properly trim windows/windshields on FAC models. What do you guys think?........................Tandy

This shows the end view of the S-Hook he bent up out of piano wire.

Next, Mike filed and reshaped the Herr kit's plastic prop blade profile so that maximum width of the prop blade occurs out about 50% of the prop semi span as shown below.

The Flying Aces Club (FAC) is a society of unique individuals with a common interest to preserve and promote the traditional building and flying of free flight stick and tissue scale model aircraft. The national headquarters of the FAC group is based in Erie, Pennsylvania and is headed by a Mr. Lin Reichel. Across the nation there are flying aces "squadrons" of record, including three squadrons here in Texas. The one in the north Texas area is called "The Lone Star Squadron," and the squadron leader is Mike Midkiff. Mike is the spark plug of rubber powered scale models with years of building, flying and judging experience. He is always ready to help the new comer in FAC modeling and share his experience and skill. As you read in my previous reports, Mike has be advising me all through the construction of the J-3 Cub. Since I had pretty much stalled out on the J-3 Cub's window trim, Mike invited me over to his house in Hurst, Texas, to give me few lessons on "making the Cub come alive" as he put it.

Using a J-3 Cub 3-View, he showed me how to paint and cut regular card stock and glue it to the windshield as shown at left to achieve the appearance of the Cub's three piece windshield. Mike says in scale, perception is everything. He also cut out some holes in the nose block and colored them black to represent the Cub's cowl intake air openings also shown at left.

The next thing Mike showed me was how to bend up a S-Hook on the end of the prop shaft as shown above. He said this provides for self centering of the rubber motor behind the prop.

Using a Sharpie pen, Mike drew on some cowl panel lines shown on the J-3 Cub's 3-View. He thought that the windows looked good enough as they were and did not need any added card stock perimeter trim. However, he did feel that an outline of the top of the door needed to be added. I added this outline using black striping tape after I got home as shown above.