Sea Duck Scratch Build with Three Helpful Tips

Building from scratch is so rewarding to me to take some sheets of foam board and one day make it fly is a great feeling. I have built the FT simple Soarer, FT Racer and the FT Mini Vector all were fun builds but the Sea Duck was much more challenging. Wanting to fly it on water one day so I finally went ahead and purchased the flite Test brown board and loved it so much that I will not do another scratch build without it. Thank you Flit Test for putting the free planes on our web, I use the Tile planes and they work great. When working on this build I figured out 3 good tips to help strengthen your plane faster to prepare for paint and just look better.The plane is powered with the flite test twin C pack a 4cell 3000 mAH battery and running 9-4.5 propeller. This is a great set up plenty of power, takes right of the grass in about 3 feet.When googling up pictures of the Sea Duck found these color images of the plane aged and worn it was yellow and red but making it your own design is always the best part of scratch build.After sanding the brown board I really like the look so by just using an aging technique with an airbrush and then putting on a coat of acrylic flat clear coat for some more waterproofing it is ready to go.Tip #1 if you want to strengthen and make a leading Edge or trailing edge look really good and not have the raw edge of the foam showing, you can cover it with this  technique..Tip #1 Take a scrap piece of foam board cut it 7/8” wide and as long as you need, peel the brown paper off, spray it a little with 77 spray glue and let it set for a little bit. It is best before putting it in place to have some marks about 3/8” from the edge start by laying the paper down on that line. Set it with your finger, once you have it set work the edge until you make a crease then continue it around the edge of the foam.Tip #2 I love Flite Test so I honor them by putting their Flite Test logo on all my scratch builds, so what I came up with using good old fashion tracing paper. Use your iPhone just screen shot some different size logos from the site.Tip #2 Some time you have to edit them to get the right size. Then print them for templates, I like to use a paint marker to finish them and with a plane you are aging you can sand it with the  sponge sander to dull it.Tip #3 The way to speed up for prep for paint and make it a much better job before you glue the parts together figure out what side is the finish side lay it flat on your table and pre-sand it. It makes it really fast and easier to get into all the hard to get to areas if you what until it’s done. Try using a sponge sander on the fine side you can find them at Low’s or HomeDepot in the paint section.I hope these few tips can help your build be a little easier, look better and be stronger.