EZ Line antennae

[Ken from NJ]

This is just a warning so no one has to go through what I did due to my own ignorance.

 

Heard about EZ Line, bought some EZ Line (Heavy gauge for my 1/48 planes), used EZ Line, and was quite happy until I noticed something:

 

I would cut and stretch some EZ Line for an antenna, hold each end in each alligator clip of my X-Acto extra hands, position the antenna, super glue it, brush on accelerator, release from the alligator clips, and trim off the excess.  Now when I say I stretched some line, I was thinking "the thinner the better."

 

All very well for tail to wingtip, or tail to fuselage.  But I (dummy) didn't anticipate how much it may relax back to its pre-stretch state.  Which was not a problem until the EZ Line antenna was stretched from tail to a radio mast.  Now I have three slight but noticeably bent masts.

 

On a Ki-43, the mast bends back only a couple of degrees.

 

On my early Zero (A6M2) the slight normal bendback, (of the top maybe 10% of the mast), sorta-kinda covers the tension/ warp/ bend.

 

But on my F2A Buffalo, my EZ Line refurb of a broken stetched sprue antenna warped the hell out of the mast.  And this after I only turned away for a few minutes.  I did then remove the EZ Line and re-replace again with sprue, but the damage had been done.

 

I still love this stuff. My F4F looks great because the mast is canted far forward, enough so it more than compensated for any EZ Line springback.  And antennas that connect from fuselage to a tail-to-mast antenna provide beautiful tension where the tail-to-mast antenna needs a little kink.

 

My mistakes, I blame only myself because the product is great and I'll continue using it. 

 

 

Ken

 

 

[Blackcollar]

Thanks for the heads up.  I have some easy line in among my tools but have not used it yet.

 

Al