Wheel Pants on Shoestring Racer - MicroRacers Kit

There are several ways to attach the wheel pants on the Shoestring Racer kit. The video we did for the microracers was done on the P-51 kit, and it does not have landing gear. So I agree that more information about how to build up the Shoestring Racers would be helpful.

It's a bit tough to explain some of the techniques that we have used to do this part of the assembly.

Having said that, here goes:

First we have to talk about the landing gear comprised of 2 carbon rods.

Get the CF rods crossed through fuselage and glued into the wings. The carbon rod pierces the underside of the wing in laser etched positions. The CF rods cross and build structure. It's quite ingenious structure, and thanks to Gary Jones and Bob Selman for the clever and elegant design on this part of the model. The CF rods guarantee your dihedral and symmetry, add strength as well as serving as landing gear. Line them up nice and start tacking them down with foam safe CA or other glue. I use the our UHU FoamSafe CA with Foam Safe Kicker - There are 3 positions for the CF rods that will be glued. You with me? Good. One is on the fuselage hole where both rods cross. The other 2 are on the wings. Eyeball down the nose of the plane as you glue these down. Get this right - this is critical geometry. Not difficult, but you have to do it right. Glue 'em one at a time, and harden them with kicker to tack them in place.

Now, those 3 joints are hardened and everything is straight right? Great. Now let's strengthen it and finalize the position for a stiff airframe. Gob on more glue on these joints and hit it with kicker to harden it up and build structure on these 3 joints. Now you have a super strong structure. (strong enough for our needs, and quick to achieve results) That's what you need. You added a little weight by doing this technique, but it will be fine if you don't go overboard on the "gobs" of glue. Think about the structure you are building and how strong it will need to be as you do this procedure. It will come out fine. This rather crude technique actually has a place. If you want to do more structure building, get some micro bubbles from your local hobby shop, and you can build all sorts of structure with CA glue and the white powdery micro bubbles.

OK - now to your actual question about the wheel pants:

Dry fit the foam wheel pants. They will be acting as skids on the gym floor. As they go through the air, we want these flat plates to be running true with the airframe, otherwise they could have a serious vertical stab effect, you dig? OK. So, we dry fit them to see how they are going to look. Now, we can choose to use the round doublers on the inside of the foam wheel and on the outside as well if we don't mind the cosmetics of it all. I you are an ace flyer and do not intend to ever crash, you can get away with no doublers - just tack them in place with CA and kicker, and eyeball the alignment. Next, using the "gob of CA with kicker structure building trick," we finalize the postion. In effect you are prototyping a connector between the foam skids and the carbon rod. The gob of hardened CA glue is the "connector".

If you use the doublers, they are merely composites in the CA structure that you are building to hold the foam skids in place. The slot-like holes in the round doublers accommodate the angle of the carbon rods, and hold the wheel pants "skid" in a vertical position.

Good luck and I hope this gets you through your build of the MicroRacers Shoestring planes.

These models are great for taxi-ing and touch and go's. Very fun in the gym. The P-51's are also very good flyers if you don't need landing gear - they are better flying over grass, and can handle quite a wind.