synthetic coverings: have I got this right?

Ron:

Yes I do mean Monocote and the kindred coverings. Thanks.

My first venture into this will be on the soon-to-come "Pinto" 1/2A stunter. I've already done a tentative color/pattern design apart from the one shown on the kit box.

My new Weller butane soldering torch has a nifty heat-deflector designed for use on heat-shrink tubing. Since I don't have an appropriate heat gun this might just work for me if I turn in to the lowest heat setting. I'll experiment before I use it in building the Pinto.

You have it Dave. base color then your trim covers. If you have very pointy ends to the overlay design, they will try to curl away or in the wrong direction as you iron on, so be ready for that. Do not try to tack the sharp end down first and then go back to the larger portion. You need to glue it down in basically one swipe from the larger section out to the point. Use your fingers just ahead of the iron to hold the design in the spot you need as you glue down. Make sure the iron has recovered heat wise before laying those designs down.

The Hangar 9 lineup of Ultracoat and also there Parklite lineup of coverings are what I would recommend Dave. A very nice detailed instruction sheet put into the rolls to get it right. You can pretty much follow them verbatim and get all structures covered properly.

Excellent, easy stuff to work with for covering for the first time.
http://www.hangar-9.com/Products/Ultracote.aspx?SearchTerm=Parklite

I also use the Coverite Black Baron iron with a Coverite iron sock. The socks fit the iron properly and tight, and the iron is more consistent heat wise with a fast recovery than the others I have tried and sent back.

They have a covering thermometer that you set right on the shoe side of the iron to get the heat setting right. I had problems before the thermometer, now it is easy to get the setting correct and no guessing and hoping.

Watch that torch, it will burn right thru easily.

The temperature is very critical, you use one temp for attaching and another for shrinking. Get yourself a good covering-iron with temperature regulation, and you want regret it. I have never manage to use aheat gun, the temperature and distance distance to the film seems to critical.

Large area of double covering does not work well, you'll get bubbles, put small area trim can be put on top of a base color covaring. For large areas it is better to do partial covering and to overlap about 5mm with the different covering colours.

Here is a design with different overlapping colours that I did recently;

Kris:

As I conceptualze my design it also uses translucent covering on the wing as your does; I'm thinking green at this time.

I prefer Ultracote over Monokote because its difference in temperature between glue activation and shrinking is very wide, and both of those temps are lower than the Monokote temps. With Monokote, it takes more heat to set the glue, and that temp is so close to the shrink temp, it's easy to accidentally shrink before you're ready. Also the higher temp to set the Mono glue causes more bubbles than does the lower temp to set the glue on Ultra. I think Ultracote is much easier for the inexperienced modeler to use. You can do all the shrinking with only the iron. With Mono, I have to use a heat gun to finish it. That's my experience anyway. I've only used Mono one time, and that was on my Baby Flite Streak. I wasn't as happy with it as I had hoped. It's a 3 color design on the wing, The fuse and tail are painted. With more practice I might master Monokote, but I did my first job with Ultracote perfectly with no prior practice.

They have changed the Monocote now and it is not what it used to be.
The plane above is covered in Oralite, which is nice to work with and saves a little weight too.

Stick with one brand. I have a CG Eagle II that was covered by the prievious owner with cheap chinacoat, and then i tried to overlay a design onto that with ultracoat. Safe to say it didn't turn out the way i had hoped for. The glue and shrink temps were to far apart and it didnt ahere like it should have.

I mentioned Monocote only because it was the pioneer in synthetic coverings.

Pleae keep this discussion going. It is very helpful to me as a "newb" in this subject.

I had pretty good luck with my colored overlays with Monokote using Windex to activate the glue and position the overlays. After it dries overnight it needed no heat to firm up the glue. Just a Q-tip wet with acetone traced around the edges goes through and prevents it from peeling. So far I've had no separation. But Windex does not activate Ultracote glue. That is the only advantage I found for using Mono. For compound curves on the Streak's wingtips I had to cut the overlays into smaller pieces. The Monokote adhesive trim strips are not heat sensitive, just sticky-back. And they are heavier. I was guided away from those by the experts.

I can tell you that having trim peel in flight gets ugly. It may form an intermittent pocket that can crash your model.

Happened to me on the Tower 40 ARF my neighbor gave me. He flew it for years, (and has many nicer RC planes) I crashed it bad on the second tank of fuel (still have not put it back together yet, started on a "SPAD" fuselage from plastic downspout) While the peeling trim wasn't the only reason it crashed, my neighbor was complaining about the plane not flying right. Much of the trim on one wing peeled off while I was repairing the wing.

On a control line model the effects are dramatic, the ground is closer.

Phil

Haha, yeah I expect a sudden air scoop popping up on one wing would cause some serious high speed excitement.