Preparation And Improvements; Mount The Engine - Pro Built GILES 202 Assembly Instructions Manual

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Preparation and Improvements

There are a few areas where, at this unassembled stage, you can improve the final results of
your assembly project. There are many items that cannot be addressed on the assembly line
due to cost and possibly because not every improvement would be welcomed by every
builder. Here are a few items that have come up over time.
Go over the covering with a heat gun or iron. The covering tends to get loose over time
and with changes in temperature and humidity. It may have come out of the box with
wrinkles, I can assure you it did not go into the box that way.
Clean out the hinge holes. Without removing any wood, use a very sharp X-acto knife and
remove any covering that may have been pushed into the hinge holes. It is very important
that the glue sticks to the wood and not to the covering.
Hardening holes. The fuselage sides on this plane are made of balsa which in certain areas
is doubled by lite ply.
Using wood screws in balsa is difficult because balsa is very soft. It's a good idea whenever
you drill a hole that must accept a wood screw to put a drop of thin CA into the hole and
then if necessary re-drill the hole. The CA will wick into the wood and harden it, adding
strength in that area.
Rudder servo tray. The rear rudder servo tray is not supported properly at the rear edge,
which causes rudder deflection to be less positive than it could be. This can be corrected by
adding a support across the bottom of the tray (1/8" x 3/4" balsa should do it) that attaches to
the fuselage sides.
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Mount the Engine

The first thing to do, before anything else goes in the fuselage, is to get the engine mounted
and aligned with the cowl.. This is the hardest and most time consuming step in building this
plane. If you can do this everything else should be easy. Do this first before you hinge the
rudder.
Note that the firewall already has a proper amount of right thrust built in, do not use any
other offsets. When you shim the engine out from the firewall use shims of equal thickness
on all 4 corners so that you do not introduce any other thrust angles.
If you are using a twin, you have it easy. Set the engine on the firewall in approximately the
center. Mount the cowl using all 6 - 4mm screws.
To be sure that the cowl is in the right location. Move the engine around until the prop shaft
is centered in the cowl ring.
You can judge this better by putting the spinner back plate over the prop shaft. Once you are
satisfied with the location, remove the cowl (without moving the engine) and mark and drill
the firewall.
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