As I get older, I spend a lot of time reliving the past.  The death of my extremely close friend Norm McFadden has prompted a lot of that this year.  The height of that was focused on a day with his son Dave trying to weed out and figure out what to do with the model airplane things that occupied a significant amount of his garage.

Much of what was there was a result of his tendency to buy things he could get really cheap that he might need someday.  There was a lot of Kevlar cloth and things of that nature that unfortunately would be of no use to anybody else that simply needed to go to the dump.  Amongst that was a totally derelict Voodoo Combat model he had acquired somewhere, most likely for free, that according to Dave he had intended to refurbish to use to teach his grandchildren to fly.

Norm had started to work on upgrading the plane and I assume he realized just how bad it was and abandoned the project.  If I had come across this model under any other circumstances, I may have just abandoned it also, but this was a Voodoo Norm had owned and worked on.

Gene Pape with the restored Voodoo. Flying Lines photo.

Early in our friendship, when he was 19 and I was 12, Norm had flown Voodoos as his Combat model of choice.  His Combat models were always done with functionality in mind.  They were covered with silkspan and finished only with as few coats of clear dope as were needed to fuelproof the model.  His engine of choice was the Fox needle bearing Combat Special.  He was one of the earliest adopters of long tailbooms on these models.

I decided this model needed to be restored as he would have created it back then with the exception that a bladder tank would be used instead of the metal tanks we were using at the time.  The only thing Norm had done to this particular Voodoo was to remove the metal tank from it so he could install a bladder tube in it.

When I got the model home it was filthy.  I was hoping a good bath would fix that.  I was only partially right.  The bath removed the dirt that had accumulated from years in storage.  Unfortunately, that dirt was only hiding the fact that the entire center of the model, inside and out, was fuel soaked.  The deeper I got into the project, the worse it got.  I ripped off all of the center section planking and discovered a 2” bellcrank that was mounted to the kit mount that had simply been glued to the center rib and the next rib with Ambroid glue.  The ½” X 3/8” engine bearers were glued to the model with the ½” dimension vertical meaning the entire engine mount assembly would have to be removed and replaced.  Many of the apparently intact ribs were broken here and there.  None of the outboard wing ribs were still attached to the leading edge.  And worst of all, the goo that the fuel soaked doped on silkspan had become was miserable to remove.  It took nearly two hours of sanding with open coat 36 grit sandpaper just to get that goo off of the leading and trailing edges.  The last thing required before I was ready to start putting it back together was to scrub the center ribs with acetone so there was some chance the adhesive used to put in the new parts would have some chance of holding.

Repairs finally began with using C/A to reattach the ribs to the leading edge, trailing edge,and spars where the Ambroid glue joints had failed.  Next, I repaired the damaged ribs and replaced the missing ones with new ribs.  A new outboard tip was installed along with ½ once of tip weight.  A new ½” balsa block was glued between the two center ribs to be the basis for the upgraded engine mount.  Since the two most critical parts of the model are the bellcrank mount and the engine mount, both of which rely on the center planking for their strength, I replaced the center planking with some 12 pound A grain balsa to provide added strength.  A new bellcrank platform was created including the ¼” square bearers and epoxied in place with a new Fox 3” bellcrank and cable leadouts replacing the former solid ones.  I created a 1/8” plywood fairing for the engine mounts, which was something else Norm always used.  He hated the ½” balsa engine pods that were standard practice in those days as engine mounts built using them were prone to failure.  I then attached the new maple engine bearers and leading edge filler block to the plywood fairing with epoxy and waited for it to cure.  This assembly was now trial fitted to the model and set aside until after the model was covered.

The wing was now ready to cover.  I started by covering the engine mount area with masking tape to keep the spray adhesive off of that area.  The bottom of the leading edge, trailing edge, center section planking, edges of the tip ribs, and edges of the wing tips were then coated with spray adhesive.  The silkspan was then attached dry and ironed on to seal the bond.  After trimming the bottom covering the process was repeated on the top of the model.  The silkspan was now sprayed with water and dried with a heat gun to remove any wrinkles.  The silkspan must be applied very carefully as any wrinkles will show up after applying the laminating film.  At this time I attach any ink jet printed trim, in this case the huge decal on the outboard wing, to the silkspan before adding the laminating film.  Finishing the wing is now just a matter of applying laminating film with a household iron turned up to the same setting you would use on Monokote or FasCal.  It is ironed to stick not only to the outer edges but to all of the silkspan as well.  I have used this method before with exam table paper and silk and the process is still being developed.  The best results I’ve had were when I applied exam table paper to the structure using thinned white glue.  I somehow got the wrinkles out of the covering better that time.  It’s likely that a few coats of dope to shrink the covering would get the last of the wrinkles out but that would defeat my main purpose of using this method which is to make it easy and eliminate the use of dope.  If I ever get this perfected I will pass along the details.

Now that the wing was covered I used a very sharp X-acto knife to trim around the masking tape over the engine mount are so I could remove the tape and the covering in that area.  With that done the engine mount assembly was attached to the wing with slow cure epoxy and set aside while the tail assembly was built.

While the stock tailbooms had to be replaced anyway because the plywood had died over the years, I had all along intended to use the long booms Norm would have used.  I cut the outside shape of the boom blanks and stuck the two blanks together with small pieces of two-faced tape so that when they were finished they would be exactly the same to prevent any alignment problems with the elevator.  All final shaping, drilling of the hinge pin holes and fitting to the wing is done with the booms still taped together.  The booms were then covered with film and hinged to the elevator before covering the elevator.

Once the epoxy for the engine mount was cured, I used a sharp X-acto knife to trim the covering where the booms attach to the wing.  I then used a large batch of slow cure epoxy to attach the tail booms and smear on the engine mount area to add fillets and fuelproof the engine mount.  Epoxy is the only thing I have found that will fully fuelproof an engine mount.

Now it was just a matter of adding the control horn and the correct Fox Combat Special.  After a final de-warping, the model was ready to test.

Test flying this model was unbelievable.  The engine is one I got from eBay as a horribly ugly thing a few years ago and refurbished but never tested.  It fired up on the first flip.  After running it just a bit the fuel tank was refilled, and the model flight tested.  To my surprise it flew straight out of launch, the needle setting was spot on, and the model maneuvered perfectly.  What a perfect fulfillment of a project.  I now have a wonderful memento of my great friend that can be cherished forever.

The Fox Rocket in the restored Voodoo is an eBay purchase, which ran well after being cleaned up. Gene Pape photos.