·:[ Darryl's Coot Building Journal ]:·
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[2 hrs] I straightened out all the bent aluminum on the vertical fin, and then reassembled most of it, held together by Clecos

Don’t get me wrong…I didn’t straighten the bent pieces (seen here and here) in order to use them. Rather, I am using the old assembled vertical fin as a jig to test the fit for new pieces as I build them. (As I said before, almost everything made of aluminum will have to be replaced.)

I also sandblasted a few more steel parts from the vertical fin assembly.

[7 hrs] It turns out that my tail is probably not from Forney Engineering. Russ Milham noticed some differences in the control box that I hadn’t.

This weekend, I Disassembled the entire damaged tail except for the elevator control box.

Almost everything made of aluminum will have to be replaced. Either things are damaged beyond repair or there is some other problem, like rivet holes too close to edges, extra holes, or just plain badly made.

I’ve also started sandblasting the steel parts from the tail assembly.

[2.0 hrs] I started work on the tail pieces this week–mostly cleaning, inspection and studying drawings.

The parts-Coot I purchased in late 1999 included a crunched empennage. Sometime in the late 1980s, the 60% complete Coot was being trailered from North Dakota to Arizona when the owner suffered a heart attack and the vehicle and trailer left the road. The trailer flipped and caused damage to the engine pylon and the tail assembly. A subsequent owner started removing rivets from the assembly, and that is what you see in the photos below (click on photos for a large version).

I’ve just started cleaning and inspecting the vertical fin. Here is the assembly:


This looks to be a Forney Engineering tail assembly. I base that on the fact that (1) I received the drawings for the Forney tail assembly kit with the plane, and (2) the two center ribs are parallel to each other (see drawing 314-1 for reference). Molt Taylor had the upper of the two ribs sloping upward away from the plane.

The damage is obvious. A buckeled front spar:

and

And a crinkled leading edge skin and rib near the tip:

and

[1.5 hrs] The nosewheel assembly, as it came with my parts Coot, looks like this:

I disassembled, cleaned, and inspected the parts for this assembly. Clearly, the tire and innertube should be replaced. The nylon hub is in acceptable shape. Some builders have gone to an aluminum hub (e.g. Andy Adams’s hub).

Here are the parts following disassembly and some cleaning. Clearly some sandblasting is in order!

(Someday they will look like Andy’s pretty parts.)

[2 hrs] Cleaned up the nosewheel box a bit and cut and glued in the horizontal spruce blocking along the top. The wooden part of the box is now complete. The hardware stills needs to be sandblasted and painted for final assembly.

Russ Milham pointed out to the Coot Builder’s Group this video of an RC Coot being flown in a village in China: