CSD Edge 540 review step 1

I never have liked installing the landing gear first which is the method used in most of the build manuals that I have seen to date. I find that if you're working on a standard 36" bench height, the model becomes too high to reach the inside portion of the aircraft and install most of the major fuselage items. This to me is a real pain at landing gear height, so we'll install the gear later. I've built a cradle that's well padded to do the work of holding the model while installing the components at reasonable working height. Let's do some of the component build ups first and get them out of the way now. We'll work on the servo tray first on this one. Oh yeah, almost forgot...click on the thumbnails to see larger representations of the images

As you can tell from the first picture, the cross members were not slotted deep enough at that factory to make a good fit with the stiffeners and land on the servo tray. These we have to slot deeper to make a perfect fit. After we reslotted them, we glued the entire assembly together with epoxy mixed with micro balloons and fine milled Fiber. A mixture of 75% micro balloons to 25% milled fiber mixed with your epoxy should work well and yield one of the strongest bonds possible. Set the tray aside to dry and well come back to installing it later.

Next, we'll get to one of my favorites, building the canopy. Sometimes I wish these manufacturers would take a hint from Aeroworks and pre-build these damn things in the factory. They take a God awful long time to build and are so easily scratched by the builder causing a heck of a lot of grief. I really hate mucking around with these things, but I'll show how I do it. You'll want to make four marks on your fuselage to indicate where you want your retaining tabs to be aligned. Shown is one of the rear tab alignment marks that we have established and then transferred the same measurement to the other side of the fuse. This mark will be used as the centerline for mounting the tabs on the canopy, fuse, and also for drilling the holes for the canopy hatch bolts. Perform the same operation at the front of the canopy area on both sides of the fuse. 6 tabs are supplied for this model, but I only choose to use four. Glue in the four plywood blocks inside the fuse that will hold the blind nuts.

I use one of the supplied tabs to get the correct offset for the cut in the fuse canopy receiver. The width of tab is pretty close to the with of the fuse. When you have marked the inside of the tab, move the tab to that mark and draw the tab outline to make your slots on the fuse. The next picture shows the cut outs for the canopy locking tabs already cut out and ready to receive the canopy for fitting. Next you'll want to install the canopy retainers in the canopy frame. This is now easily done by transferring the locating marks you made on the outside of the fuse to the canopy and slotting the canopy frame. After you've slotted them out and check for propter fit to the fuselage canopy receiver, glue in place with the Epoxy mixture that we established earlier.

When the glue has dried, place the canopy frame onto the fuselage and mark the holes for the retaining screws. Drill a 3mm hole all the way through each retainer from the fuse outside in. On the canopy frame the 3mm hole needs to be drilled again to fit the diameter of the blind nuts, then install the 3mm blind nuts. On the fuse, counter sink the holes to the proper depth for the 3mm cap screws by hand using a 7/32 drill bit. Do not us a power drill for this step it will go all the way through the composite skin and the inside retainer tab.

Cover your canopy with plastic wrap prior to fitting to the canopy frame. Saran wrap or any other household plastic storage wrap will do fine. This will minimize the chance of any scratches occurring. Cut the canopy glass to fit the canopy frame We chose to use Super RC Z56 glue to attach the canopy glass to the frame. It cleans up with water and has a drying time of about 3 hours to help getting everything fitted nicely and clean. When you are sure of proper placement, clamp the glass to the frame using some small clamps and wood blocks to prevent any clamp marks on the work. Set aside and let it dry overnight. An alternate method would be to use small screws to attach the glass to the frame, but this is up to you, depending on what appearance you'd like.

To in stall the Servo Tray, BVM has recently supplied a supplemental guide for this step. Click Here to view the guide.

Although the manual doesn't show it, the height of the servo deck should be 1 1/4" below the horizontal rail. With that completed, lets move on to the next assembly.