FT-22 Nose Repair

To start, the FT-22 is one of my favorite scratch builds that I've done. However, I'm finding that learning to fly it is a completely different story...

It never fails that while I'm out flying, and I have a good handle on how the control surfaces work, I put too much input into one of the Axises and I go nose first into the ground. The first repair I did was super straight foreward. I just traced and cut out a new nose from the leftover "template" of the speed build kit, assembled, and was flying the next day. The second repair that I made was just a quick patch up on the nose, since it didn't dissentigrate upon createring into the earth

This is the result of today's crash, the second repair that I did to it seemed to hold up better than I had originally thought it would. This got me thinking, since I crash so much, what can I do to make the nose of this stronger and be able to handle an impact into the ground. 

My first thought was not to replace the entire nose like I had done previously. The original design, as awesome as it is, has a couple of weak spots where the wing and the belly pan slot into the nose. You can see that I re-enforced the side of the nose with a small piece of foam on the previous repair. This time around I wanted to just cut out and replace the main damaged area. The lines shown here are where I was planning on cutting. In the end, I decided to cut to the front of the "cockpit" because that would be easier to line up with a new nose. Plus, if it didn't line up perfectly, as I'm still a beginner to scratch build, it wouldn't look horrible.

All trimmed off, ready for the new nose.

Tracing out the template for the new nose.

Here is there the added strength might come in. I noticed on the parts that I repaired previously that the sections that were hot glued down where stronger. Also, the wing spar from the original build is also made of glue and that is plenty rigid for the design. I wanted to add some strength to the nose, as stated before so I did a 50% cut diagnally along the side of the nose and filled it with hot glue. This was done to both sides.

Completely assembled nose.

As a side note: look on my arm there where the band-aid is. Remember in one of Josh and Josh's video where they recommend wing launching the prop-in-slot. Well, I didn't listen and the prop caught my arm while hand launching today. It's a pretty narly gash, but it won't need stitches. So remember, wing launch = GOOD, fuselage launch = SLICED UP ARM.

The inside of the assembled nose. 

During the assembly I used the same type of fill method that I used on the inside of the nose. Once again, hoping this will add a little extra strength to the nose. 

Finished product, now onto the hatch idea I came up with while making the repair.

For the hatch I went a little simple. I took a rectangle piece of foam, Cut it out, removed about half a centimeter of foam from each side, and too the back piece of paper off so that it will curve around the top of the cockpit. 

To latch it down, since I don't have access to magnets or anything fancy for the time being, I used packaging tape. On the front is a tape hinge, similar to that used for the elevons on the back. In the back, I covered both the cover and the back fuselage with tape, then made a simple tape latch with a doubled over piece of tape end. So far it looks like it will hold up nice.

Tomorrow is the re-maiden of this plane. Since I modified the nose to strenghten it I don't know exactly how she will perform. However, I have a theory that it won't matter once I get her up in the air and tracking.