okay, so I don't have a lot of in progress shots. I mean, the community has been so active and not active at the same time. anyway, here's where I stand on these:
The Yuma... Blackened, gaff taped the black parts... i did BBQ black and then Ace Antique Gold over it with some high grit sandpaper buffing.. I'll add pics in a second.
This was before I spun 220 sandpaper over the emitter!
The Hero... The electronics are on standby. I hand-cut a piece of new proto board to fit in the box so I can have all the components organized and compressed to the board.
I was able to slice up my own set screw for the emitter. This was harder than it looked, I beveled a cheap cutting disc by slicing up a piece of aluminum at a really shallow angle to bevel the edge of the disc to get it small enough to cut a 1-1.5 mm slot
In the meantime I went at the rails again.
I've had a baggie of gray plastruct bits and some brass rails I roughly cut and have been working on them in some spare time. I stared at the Hero pictures so long that I realized how LITTLE hugged the control box. Like 1mm or less.... and it was thinner than I thought too.. so I took a sanding drum and buzzed the lower channel, and upper channel different amounts. I also had to shorten the lower edge that hangs over the arrows. I stopped a little short because I was worried such little surface area would leave the control box.... well like it is today: fragile! I handle my props a lot, and at least wanted to be able to play with the control box a little.
(ProbeDroid's photos?)
1) those brass rails were pristine a month ago
2) Still looks like the gray area is chunky huh? Look how little I have touching the control box. Also, this is very zoomed in... it looks a little thick but I sanded the 1/16 rails
thinner with a dremel on almost every surface. So, it's thinner than it looks.
I used a toothpick to specifically swab, spiral and spread E6000 on only the surfaces that need it (in order to keep glue out of the card's channel) and I don't think it's going anywhere! yay for silicone! Interestingly enough, I forgot the upper surface of the plastruct, so the channel is a little taller than the card, by about .5 mm? .25 mm? something tiny, like cardstock thickness.
I'm okay leaving the gray rails a little larger if it means the box is a little more sturdy. It also... is so satisfying! The channel is the exact size of the card, and sliding it into place is so cool! The card is a little loose, nothing a piece of packing tape won't fix, and it's crazy how small angles and millimeter thicknesses can make this a snug fit.
I had to use a metal file on the edges of this card, to get past my hand-cut gray rail edges. Neither the brass or the gray rails block my bit of proto board from dropping in!