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Main Fuselage Components
Glue together the double thickness lower keel spar parts (front and rear) and then join them into one length. The join shape is quite weak at one location so be careful (I broke mine!) and consider veneering the join after with some thin ply.
Glue together the F4 formers. F4A must be on the front side when inserted into the keel spar.
Join the side spars. There is a fair amount of flex in these so you don't have to be too careful about the alignment of the joint. I veneered one side of the joint with 1mm ply.
In my version of the kit, the side spars reach all the way to the last former, F10 (which is notched to receive the spars). I trimmed the outside edge of the side spars (between formers F9 to F10) to match the profile that the stringers will have (else the side spar bulges out) and I trimmed the interior profile as the spars approach each other (right at the rear near F10) to make sure they do touch/interfere with each other.
In other versions of the kit, the side spars apparently reach to just beyond F9 - their outer profile might still need a little trim (thinking to when you cover it).
Begin by dry assembling the fuselage (use clamps as stands), including the deck and make sure everything lines up. Pay particular attention to the front section where the multi-part formers need to all line up in the same vertical plane. If you have any alignment issues, there is a little possible movement in the formers. You might also need to carefully adjust a slot.
Glue in formers F4 to F9 (only) and place formers (unglued) F1b, F2b, F3b, the deck and F10. Make sure you push the formers all the way down the slots.To ensure a good alignment, insert (don't glue) the side spars and the rear top spar. The rear top spar is in 2 sections, just tape them together for this exercise. The rear of the top spar section (labelled R3) is notched by the ply doublers you glued on in the previous step. Make sure the top of F10 sits down correctly in here (that is, this helps you make sure F4 has the correct alignment in its slot). Make sure that the front of the top rear spar is sitting correctly in its slot in the rear of the F4 former. Make sure also that F4 is perpendicular to the lower keel spar (I needed to adjust the slot in the keel slightly).
After the glue is dry, remove the temporarily placed parts above.
Now with formers F1a and F1b, what I did was join them first (there is enough flex in the structure to get the one piece in), but then I actually cut a new piece from spare ply because that was stronger. Use the original as the template.
Glue in formers F2b and F3b onto the lower keel spar.
Glue in the deck and former F1 (a+b). There is sufficient flex in the structure that you can insert it into the slot in F1 as well as the slots in F4. Do your best to ensure the structure is appropriately perpendicular.
Glue in formers F2a and F3a and then straight away glue in the two shaped side spars. These will ensure the correct alignment of these two formers. Make sure former F1 is fully planar when attaching to the side spars. Use rubber bands or tape around the side spars if you need some tension to hold them in place. If the side spars in your kit reach F10, just sit F10 (do not glue in) to provide the appropriate seat.
Rear tail section (R3) and upper spar
Glue the two ply doublers to the rear tail section R3, make sure you carefully align the ply with the R3 stab cutout structure - use the F10 former to help temporarily align the notches in the ply.
Glue the doubled parts for R1, R2 and R8
I found that dry assembly with the rear R3 section sitting in its fuselage former slots, and then holding the R8 fin post in place, made it clear whether it was going to mate well with R10 (which we have not glued in yet) and the lower keel notch. In my case it did not, but not by much (just < 0.5 mm gaps). I needed to makevery small adjustments in various locations to make it all align so I would get a good glue join (R8 to R3 and R8 to R10 and R10 to the lower keel spar).
Once you are happy with how it will all go together, build the rest of the fin structure by gluing together R1, R2, R8 and R3, making sure R8 is in the same alignment as the previous dry assembly tests. Then cut to shape and glue in the balsa cross pieces of the fin and sand down to the fin thickness.
Glue on some square stick (I used 6.5mm) onto the ply doublers beneath the stab. cutout on R3 - this will form an extended base for the stab. You must make sure of course that when the stab. is passed through the cutout that it sits squarely and snugly on this base (although it;s harder, best to cover the stab. after its glued in place because else you have to make the cutout larger [for the covering] which you don't want to do). You will, no doubt, need to fiddle about to get this right.
Glue in the front section of the upper spar to the formers (from F4).
Glue the rear former R10 to the R3 tail section and make sure it is well pushed up into the slot formed by the ply doublers in R3 and well mated with R8 the fin post.
Now glue in the whole rear section of the upper spar (the R3 tail section with fin and R8 fin post) and just sit the two upper spar parts (front and rear) together in the join (don't glue the join yet). Make sure R10 is well mated with R8 and the lower notch in the keel spar and that the side spars, if they reach R10, are glued into their notch.
Use clamps to hold the R8 and R10 sections together.
Now you can put glue in the joint of the upper spar and clamp it in situ. I left it until now because it is a bit unwieldy doing all of the trialling and testing with such a long piece and also if we needed a little space in that joint to make everything align at the rear. You can veneer the joint afterwards with some 1mm ply if you want.
As you are gluing all this together, sight along the fuselage and make sure the fin is vertical. You can make small adjustments at formers F9 and F8 if you need to rotate the structure a little. It may also help to place some longerons into the structure for alignment.
Longerons
Now you can glue in all of the longerons per the schematic. You will need to make some cuts and some joins, but there are plenty of pieces to go around. I used splice joints (you could also consider butt jointing at a former I suppose).
Cockpit - my approach to this was to build it largely 'in-situ'. The reason for this is that the likelihood that I get all the formers exactly perpendicular is less than 100%. Therefore, I want to build the cockpit in place to make sure everything aligns.
I decided to leave about 1.5mm total between the cockpit and the fuselage formers (allowing for some covering).
Start by trimming the rear of the side cockpit spars when the rear former sits against the notch when the triangular buttress pieces are in place. I found I needed to shorten the front of the flanges of the buttress pieces that inserted into the side spars a little bit for it to all sit nicely.
Then shorten the front of the side spars appropriately to fit so that when the side spars are centred, there is about 0.5mm at either end.
We assume that the main former F4 is perpendicular to the deck as will be the rear former of the cockpit.
Put wax paper under the side spars and behind the rear former and infront of the front former so you don't clue the pilot box to the fuselage !
Glue in place the rear former and triangular buttress pieces. Push back against former F4 and clamp the side spars and rear former.
Glue in the centre and front formers.
Glue in the top spar.
Adjust the centre former to be parallel to the former below it.
Adjust the angle of the front former to be parallel to the fuselage former in front of it and ensure about 1.5mm clearance.
Making sure that the centre and front formers and tightly held by the side spars, clamp the side spars at the front.
Use a rubber band over the fuselage and cockpit if needed to hold the top spar down.
Cut and insert the two side longerons to stiffen the structure further.
I used round magnets to attach the cockpit. Cut out recess holes in the side spars and cockspit spar into which you can insert the magnets.
Sheet the front and bottom sections of the cockpit. The supplied sheeting is not wide enough to do all of one side so I did multiple sections per side as desired. I extended the width of the top central cockpit spar with some scraps so that the sheeting, which I joined at the top centre had something extra to attach to.
After you cover the cockpit, you can attach the canopy. I found the supplied material far too hard and stiff to work easily with. I made my own with two laminator pockets laminated together. That worked well. I cut to shape and attached with 4mm, M1.75 (drill pilot holes) screws. I added some ply support around the top central cockspit spar and the rear former (F4) just to make sure I didn't split them when screwing in the screws.
Wing Mount
In my kit, the wing mount was strangely oriented with the grain across the long shapes. This made them very flixble longitudinally which is the opposite to what you want. So, using spare ply from the kit, I cut two more with the grain along the long shapes. This made them nice and rigid.
Use the block to fabricate two supports (into which you will drill holes before attaching for the dowel) for the front and two for the rear. You glue these two the central keel and then the wing mounts are glued to those.
I also made a third support at the middle of the wing mount.
It was very difficult getting the angle of the supports just right (despite having the former shapes as a guide) so that the wing mount halves, when seated on them, were true and at the right dihedral. I ended up having to laminate thin sheet on top of the supporets and sand - I had to do this a few times !
Push Rods
I used DuBro Laser rods.
I used one for each of the rudder and elevator
Because I made a detachable stab (so each half independent) I made a fork to attach to the end of the elevator pushrod. It was arranged with
one section of threaded rod screwed into the laser rod and into a clevis (adjustable for a while until you are happy)
attached to the clevis was a wire fork (epoxy, wire wrapped and shrink wrapper) made with one-ended thread rod
the threaded ends of the fork were attached to a clevis each
this way you have adjustments at the servo, at teh horn, and for a while, until all wrapped up, the centre fork/rod join
I made a small hole in the penultimate former for the rudder push rod (the left side).
I made horizontal supports for the pushrod sleeves down the fuselage so that they won't move when actuated.
Main Fuselage Pictures (somewhat random order!)
Cockpit
Wing Mount
Grain wrong way, make your own.
Push Rods
The threaded rod section (that goes into the laser rod was not this long in reality)
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