Off with the old....

Well, I was initially just going to patch the covering on this old girl, but discovered it to be in much worse shape than I thought. The transparent red covering was extremely brittle, and the adhesive on it was pretty much shot. My good friend, Bryan, suggested that the transparent absorbs more UV and seems to fail much earlier...I think he's right. Thinking back over the last 40+ years, all of the birds I've had with transparent covering seem to fad and become brittle much faster than those with opaque colors.

I repaired several loose joints in the horizontal stab...

The servo box I built several years ago for the elevator had broken joints, where the glue had cracked from vibration.

The tail of the fuselage also had several loose & broken joints, and the covering was coming loose there as well. 

The elevator covering was very brittle, I literally poked holes in it by accident with my fingertips.

 The covering on the bottom of the stab didn't look too bad, but I decided to not patch it, but rather just pull it all off and recover...

The tail in bare bones, waiting for sanding and new covering.

I trimmed away all of the transparent covering from the sides of the fuse to make repairs to the structure.

The opposite side of the fuse uncovered, repaired, and ready for covering. 

...and the covering begins.

Dave
http://www.rcdave.net