Sunday, September 12, 2010

UFT III Has Landed

Sort of.
The landing wasn't exactly smooth, but it wasn't a crash landing.
If you haven't been following along at home, assembling the UFT III hasn't been going so well.
See here for some early spy shots.
If you have been following along at home, you know that I lost another wheel yesterday, and the solution was to "glaze" the wheels on, using the glaze to reattach the wheels, so to speak.
Well, it sort of worked, and it sort of didn't.
Here's the first wheel that broke off:



Mission accomplished! (high fives all around, light the cigars, pat myself on the back, etc.)
Wait Mr. Flat Tire! What about the second wheel?
Oh, the second wheel!
Well, that didn't turn out as planned:



The strut is on there, just barely.
I think what happened was that as the glaze melted, the landing gear shifted. I was thinking about that as the UFT was firing, hoping that the whole thing wouldn't just fall down seeing as the two front landing gear were basically unattached yet holding up the whole thing.
I once tried to glaze a knob on to a pot cover and since the cover was rounded, the knob sort of slide down the side when the glaze fluxed.
That's ceramic talk for melted.
Anyways, I should have sort of thought of that before I decided to do what I did, but to be honest, I've made so many of these "learning" type of errors that it's sort of hard to keep track of them.
Sometimes I don't remember the first one until I've done it a second time.
So, what to do?
About the other landing gear, I mean.
Well, I could break it off and reset it or I could try to add more glaze to the joint and refire.
I'm thinking about it.
Either way, I'm going to refire for there are areas where the glaze didn't pass industry standards.
Oh, and here's what the UFT III looks like:



Detailed shots when the whole thing is finished.
Promise.

2 comments:

John Romeo Alpha said...

It looks like he tried to land on Jupiter. Not a good idea.

limom said...

It came in low and clipped something on the way down. Next model will be equipped with VTOL.