We installed the canopy on our C-3. It gives it a whole different feeling when flying the trainer.
Check out our new video “Recovering a Link Trainer with Fabric” (Under “Videos” heading in right column ).
A whole different feeling —
Tag: C-3
Where did the holes go?
We had help installing the wings from Rick’s grandsons, Ian and Tanner. It was hard to find the original location of the aileron hinge screw holes since they were buried under the new fabric. Diligent pork-stick probing did the job. Next time we’ll mark the holes when installing fabric. Both wings on; one aileron moves.
Done doping
We finally finished doping our C-3 trainer. Wings and control surfaces are ready for the fuselage.
Leroy got out his old drafting tools to place the star perfectly parallel to the fuselage.
Proud to be American Flag Red !
As you probably know, many of the Link Trainers had flag stripes on the rudder. Here is a trainer restored by Ed Link’s folks; Ed donated trainer No. 85 built in 1941 to Melbourne, Florida’s Airport Museum.
After two coats of sealer, a coat of UV protection, and two coats of butyrate white dope, we are finally ready to put the finish color on our C-3 trainer.
We thought picking red would be easy, but there are lots of reds. I asked Rick, which one looked most like American Flag red. Rick is a researcher – he dived in and got this great answer.
In RGB color space, American flag red is hex #b22234; it is composed of 69.8% red, 13.3% green and 20.4% blue. In CMYK color space, it is 0% cyan, 80.9% magenta, 70l/*% yellow and 30.2% black. It has a hue angle of 352.5 degrees, a saturation of 67.9% and a lightness of 41.6%.
We went with Tennessee Red.
“Do you smell something?”
We were working on our C-3. We finally got the directional gyro working; after 3 disassembles / reassembles. All of our fuselage instruments were working except for the clock, for the first time. Then Rick said “Do you smell something?” Things went from best-ever to bad in an instant. Smoke billowed out of the control box as we fumbled for the OFF switch. Wax from the burning autosyn transformer dripped into a pool inside the control box. We opened the building doors to let the smoke outside.
