R/C SR-71 Hobby lab

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The SR-71 water decals are very fragile. I got tape too close to the cockpit front windshield and lost some of the decals. Otherwise, I found that I had to lay down masking tape sticky side up over the decals and pin the tape in place so that the non-sticky side was covering the decals. I found some acrylic spray paint Krylon Chalkboard in the acrylic section at Michaels. The paint is a little bit flatter than the gloss that is on the original SR-71, but overall the finish is not too bad.

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I am going back and working on the nose damage of my Hobby Lab Sr-71 that was damaged in a crash last Fall. It looks like the repair may be doable. There seems to be a small thin nose cone at the tip of the SR-71. I separated it from the model and carved out the thin styrofoam inside a little bit with an Exacto knife. I then cut two small profiles of the SR-71 front fuselage from 1/64" ply. I glued one ply profile to the back of the crumpled fuselage without the nose cone tip using Foam-Cure flexible glue and 2 small plastic vice grips.

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The end result of the first half shell repair without the nose cone tip looks like this. The photo glare somewhat obscures this first half of the ply repair.
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I then took the remaining ply profile and put a slight crease in it with the Exacto knife and glued it to the nose tip holding it in place with a disposable paint brush handle. After the glue had dried I glued this part into the upper fuselage and lower shell, which was already in place.

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The final finished repair still remains, but it does look doable. This was fairly easy once I envisioned how to do it.

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I flew the repaired SR-71 again this past Saturday on an E15-P. I had an old launch pad that I built for the Lady Hawk that is adjustable for launch angle. I launched at about 30 Degrees from the vertical. I do not have any video or take-off pictures. Perhaps, the model transitioned to glide better than a vertical launch, but I still ended up in a flat pancake landing. Perhaps, my R/C skills are lacking. I could tell that I had a little bit of R/C control but not much and not much altitude to work with either. The good thing is that there was no damage except for the battery hatch coming off upon landing.

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