John Woodfield PSS Hawker Sea Hawk (2025)

There’s been quite a bit of sanding this week, starting with the cockpit opening and then prior to tackling the wing fairings I needed to sand most of the fuselage too, leaving just the tail section to do another time.

With the bulk of that done I went on to creating my wing retention mechanism, cobbled together from a pair of M5 wing retaining bolts and captive nuts, some old biro tubes and a length of aluminium tubing.

I turned the heads of the nylon bolts downso they slid inside the biro tubes easily, making them something like a very long grub screw. The plan was to drill a 5mm clearance hole through both the outer and inner carbon tubes allowing the nylon bolt to then be screwed through and thus retain the wing. Should the bolts ever shear off on landing then the heads should fall easily out of the tubes and any remaining threaded portion will drop inside the fuselage and with any luck I will then be able to jiggle it forward and out through the cockpit opening.

I was somewhat nervous about drilling the carbon tubes, fearful of the holes being off centre and weakening the tubes especially since as I was drilling them blind. After some careful measuring to determine where the drill centre needed to be I then decided to make a little jig to help minimise any drill wander.

I started with a small pilot hole to check the hole's position and then worked my way up to the 5mm clearance hole in 4 stages.

Because of the hole's location I used a pin vice to lengthen the drill's reach and had to cut a larger than ideal access hole through the stage 6 fuselage former too.

The biro tubes alone weren’t long enough to reach from the captive nut to the air intake, I had some thick walled aluminium tubing which whilst long enough was also quite heavy so I opted to combine the two, linking them together with the biro’s rubber sleeving.

I added the intake formers either side of the fuselage along with my additional bridge pieces of balsa to form my dummy air intakes. With those glued in place I was then able to glue in the tubes. (The drill bit within the tubes was to ensure the flexible rubber joint between the biro and ally tubes remained straight whilst the glue set).

I added the exhaust formers as per the plan and then made some leading edge pieces around the intake openings.

I had to then subsequently cut part of the intake former away to improve the appearance of the intake.

And then neatenedeverything upwith a bit more sanding.

A bit of extra excitement this week…The canopy arrived from Gliderworks and very nice it is too!Much thicker and stronger than anything I could have produced from pop bottles and very well packaged.

https://gliderworks.online/index.php/product/seahawk-canopy-pre-order/

Time to sheet the faired sections…

The fuselage former spacing is generally around 4” but between stages 7 and 8 this extends to 5” so I decided to add some extra balsa support pieces.

Prior to sheeting I also then added supporting strips of scrap balsa sheet around the edges of the openings.

I gave much thought as to which way to run the grain direction on the faired sections and eventually opted to run it longitudinally for the most part but transversely around the more curved leading edge sections which I think may well be the build guides intent. A fair bit of measuring and trimming was entailed but the process wasn’t as difficult as I had first anticipated. I started on the upper surfaces...

I chose to do the leading edge in small segments primarily due to the curvature but it was also much easier to trim the smaller pieces to size.

It took a while but fittedreasonably well all round and with only a few areas that will require filling in due course.

I did the underside in a similar manner.

After that it was yet more sanding to round everything off and then time to refit the wings for another photo opportunity.

Out of curiosity I thought I would take this opportunity to weigh it and see where I’m at in relation to the 1.3kg AUW of the prototype build aircraft.

The prototype used 1.5mm (1/16) balsa covering everywhere whereas I’ve gone 50% thicker, using2.4mm (3/32) on the wings and double the thickness by using 3mm (1/8) on the fuselage. In addition I’ve used ply formers in lieu of balsa in a number of places and I also of course have the additional weight incurred by having detachable wings and a rudder.

I loaded it up with a battery, receiver and all the servos and my new canopy and it currently stands at 1.75kg which I don’t think is too bad. Mine is still missing its nose, tail fin covering, rudder, tailplane and any detail items like the pilot and then the biggy which will be final covering in glass cloth. I’m not sure how much weight the cloth will add but hopefully I’ll be able to keep the finished weight below 2.5kg. I’m fairly certain I’ll be able to balance the model with little if any additional nose ballast. It certainly feels light for its size as it stands anyway so I’m hopeful.

So that was page 15 of the build guide completed. I’m going to skip page 16 for now, which is the nose block and move on to pages 17 and 18 – the tail fin covering, tail plane and rudder.

You may have noticed that whilst my Sea Hawk now has air intakes there are as yet no exhausts. That’ll be page 19.John Woodfield PSS Hawker Sea Hawk (25)

John Woodfield PSS Hawker Sea Hawk (2025)

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