Repairing Nemere 1/8 scale

[bocorvin]

Retroplane 2015 was the first for me. I'am writing in english because my french is not that good. My english is better than my french, but not faultless....)I can speak and understand french, but I don't dare to write in it.

I went to retroplane with my Nemere, scale 1:8, wingspan of 2.50. It was built of the "Rippensatz" from the Aufwind 4/2011. I added spoilers and a interior with a pilot.

After a couple of flights friday my Nemere had a collision in mid air with a much bigger plane. The other plane could land with some damage on the horizontal stabilizer, but my Nemere had lost all speed and dived from 20? meters straight in the ground (which was pretty hard) destroying the fuselage up to the wing
It was 3 o'clock and the "Expo fuselage" was at 5!
So I gathered all the small pieces and puzzled the nose together using all my superglue. Luckily I could borrow some more




A bit late my small Nemere was presented to the "Expo" an on saterday I could make quite some flights.
Back at home I rebuild the nose



[img] and joined it with the fuselage. The interior was changed a bit , putting heavier stuff further forward, so I needed less lead.



All I need to do is getting it back in the matching colour, it will take some time!

[VincentB]

Hi Vincent, welcome to the forum

[bocorvin]

Hi Vincent, thanks for the welcome! We enjoyed rertroplane very much!

[ChristianR]

Beautiful repair

[bocorvin]

Merci! and now the difficult part, to match the colours and the fun part, restoring the interior

[Walter]

Hello,

...that gives me motivation to repair my "kandidat" - also crashed on friday because of a "traffic jam between the ears"....

I saw your plane flying - like these smaller planes!

Good luck
Walter

[bocorvin]

After some time, I thought the repair of the damaged Nemere scale 1/8 should be finished.
One of the things I regretted with this Nemere scale 1 : 8 is the colouring. After a lot of try and error I tried to paint/colour the balsa with acrylics. To my disappointment it was not as translucent as I thought it would be. I also mixed some colours ( sienna, burnt sienna and white).
After rebuilding the nose and some minor repairs at the wings I couldn't get the right colour back! Also with varnishing the colour changed

The changed interior, putting all the heavy stuff in front, in the open space goes the lipo 2cell 800 mah, no seat for the pilot


Next the decals, made by my friend Adri. We had a long discussion about the thickness of yhe olympic rings. After downloading these rings it looks they are different as the onn one of the sparse photo's

it is possible to calculate more or less the thickness of the rings, we estimated at 1/14 maybe 1/15 of the diameter. Fun isn't After cutting the decals, we used the thinnner ones.







Ready to fly again, miserebal weather over here You can see the colour difference, my only comfort is that the real thing also had a lot of different colours
There wil be photo's of its flights!

Vincent

[CHAUSSEBOURG]

Vincent, I think it is a very good and strong repair, and when your Nemere will be in the thermal, nobody is going to see ant difference in the colours!
I wish you a lot of good flights.
Pierre

[bocorvin]

I hardly flew my repaired Nemere scale 1: 8, but I flew it a lot the saturday afternoon on the 2016 Retroplane, on the N slope. There was quite a lot of wind and I made a video with a camera on board.
https://youtu.be/s5m82U01QJA

Vincent

[Philippe26]

Wouaou !!! great flight !
The wind was enormous (the sound).....
It is super to see three gliders together at a moment ...
The landing seems a little bit hard....
The pilot had no seat, but I never heard it conplaining for one......
Philippe

[bocorvin]

Hello Philippe,

Thanks very much for your comments! About the landing, it was not too hard, at least for my doiing To get a better picture, the camera is on a pod and attached with velcro on the wing. It can get off when the wing stops abruptly.







The camera itself is secured with a safety line at the rudderhorn of an aileron, or with tape. In our club there are two camera's lost.......

Vincent

[Philippe26]

Good night,
I walk on the montains around my village, and sometimes I found some items becoming from deltas, Paraglides etc....
Generally I give them back to the aéro club near my home....
Thanks for these explainations.
Good flights.
Philippe

[bocorvin]

Bonjour a tous,
Sorry, I go on in English. The fuselage of my Nemere 1:8 was damaged at Chantemerle, it was possible to repair it, but...
In last years I thought about building a light scale glider, inspired by the Rhonbussard at Retroplane 2016 at Polsa. It had a span of 2m and was only 500grams! It kept flying with almost no wind.
Michel Leroy was also inspired by this fact. and made his small Slinsby Petrel.
My Nemere 1:8 was about 1100grqams, the fuselage 500 and wings 550 grams. I had some ideas about building lighter fuselage and decided to build a new fuselage to see if that would work.
If this should work allright I might change the (4) wing servo's to gain an extra 40 grams.
I hope to get at a flying weight of about 850 grams and hope it will fly better in light airs and also better in thermals.
The idea was to use only skin to take up alll the loads, no stringers. Hopefully the servo's and lipo weight enough to get the cg right.
I started with the frames, laminated from strips 0.6mm amd 0.4mm ply, soaked in very hot water (almost boiling)






I finished them all, 22.1 gram.


I fixed them temporarely with 10X10mm battens on a building jig.

Two long 10mm wide strips 0.4mm ply to join the bottom and top half of the 2mm balsa skin and also strips glued over the frames to join the skin seams.


This stage of the building went quick!



The wings are connected with 6mm carbon and to save weigt I used three 10mm pieces of brass tube (also because thats all I had )




To be continued,

Vincent

[Johannes]

Hallo Vincent,
schön das du wieder in Modell baust und den Baubericht hier einstellt
Die Bauart mit den Spanten ist sehr interessant und erinnert mich ein
bisschen an Schiffsbau

Viel Erfolg
Johannes

[bocorvin]

Hallo Johannes,

Danke fur das Bericht, das freut mich!
Die letzte Zeit hatte Ich mich mit andere Sachen beschaftigt, jetzt habe Ich wieder die Zeit um zu bauen .
(Die Schiffsbau hattest du gut gesehen, lange zeit her habe Ich ein 7m Segelschiff gebaut.)

Vincent

[bocorvin]

Terrible weather today, I went on,
I lifted the fuselage from the building jig.


Because of the c.g. I wanted all the heavy stuff in the nose.

Just enough place for the servo's. Yes, some holes for the servo screws are close to the edge luckily there is a spruce batten under the ply. A 800mah 3cell lipo will fit in between the servo holder and nose at the left with the voltage regulator under the servo's. The receiver comes just behind the servo's on the bottom of the fuselage. The pilot must be "reduced " a bit to fit on top.
The actuator for the horizontal tailplane cut out from glass/epoxy.

With 2 thin steelwires instaed of a push/pull rod to keep the weight down.
The vertical stabiliser/rudder.

The trailing edge is laminated from two 2X2mm spruce.



I used 3mm Robart hinges for the rudder.

I put pieces of 2mm balsa sheet over the bottom half of the fuselage to give more stiffness. It weighs very little and I guess it is easier now to glue the 2mm balsa on the upper half. The steel wires for the elevator and rudder are already in place.




The nose will be covered with 1mm balsa panels in the same pattern as the real Nemere. Weight of the fuselage in this state is 117gram.

Vincent

[malik77]

117 gr bravo impressionnant

[bocorvin]

Merci Malik, I hope to keep it light!

I went on with the topsides. I had to soak the 2mm balsa with hot water to bend it and I directly glued the wet balsa on the fuselage. I regret that because the balsa shrunk a bit, so I had to do some sanding to get it more or less straight.

I left the last to panels to dry and that was better!


Next were the wing stubs with the fairings, never an easy job

To protect the wingstubs I used 2mm hardwood at the front and 3mm balsa sheet at the trailing edge to make it strong. I thought using 1mm balsa sheet for the fairing itself, soaked in boiling water, wrapped around a pipe and let it dry.





Tyhe first piece in place, a lot more to make....

To be continued,

Vincent

[bocorvin]

Bonjour a tous,
It took some time, but finally the fairing was finished. The 1mm bent balsa seems quite fragile , so I had to do some repairs. After the staining I think to drench it in thin cyano and then dope. Hopefully it will be strong enough.


Next the covering of the nose, also with 1mm (drenched in boiling water)



.

The skid was laminated from 4mm balsa with later a 0.4mm ply bottom.
The weight of the fuselage at this stage is 192 gram. Heavier than I hoped. Next thing is the canopy. I have the impression that there have been different types and I like to make a canopy with square openings in the sides.

I am not sure, but it looks like it has only two stringers at the top, but its an interprentation, difficult to see.




Vincent.

[bocorvin]

Bonjour a tous,

I went on with the colouring of the fuselage and I have mixed feelings about that. First I put "chene moyen" teinte antiquare de Liberon. On the balsa it turned out much darker than I expected


I tried to make the colour lighter with watercolours

. With dope on it didn't get mucht much better .
In the meantime I made the canopy. On some pictures it is good to see that the canopy was made from different bended flat panels. On other pictures it looks like the canopy was a one piece molding.


To save extra ballast I tried to put all the rc components as forward as possible



also the pilot needed "modification"

Now it just fits

With dope on the fuselage

it looks very old...., but doesn't match good with the wings


Ready to fly again! Only 60 grams of lead was necessary to get the c.g. OK. Weight is now 1000gr vs 1100gr original. It also got 1dm2 bigger surface giving a wing load of 27gr vs 30.5gr original. I hoped to made it lighter, but 10% is substantial, anxious how it will fly.
I am not pleased with the colour, lets say it has character .
I like the larger wingstubs and fairings. I have mixed feelings about the tailboom without stringers, one problem was that the soaked balsa shrunk after gluing, giving a fuslage with very marked frames
I'll hope to fly it soon,

Vincent

[Johannes]

Glückwunsch, Vincent
Viele schöne Flüge und immer gute Landungen

LG Johannes

[sebastian92]

the color of the fuselage is very nice like an old glider ! and the pilot marvelous !
not exactly raccording with the wings… but like a nice and authentic repairing
The balsa is difficult to tint without marks…
good next flight

[bocorvin]

Danke Johannes and thanks Sebastian for your nice comments.
Yes its difficult to tint the balsa, ply is easier
Hopefully we will fly it coming sunday.

Vincent