So far, so good, everything was ready for starting the fuselage assembly – I thought....

 

While I was dry fitting all fuselage parts, I found that I had not inspected the kit thoroughly enough upon arrival and that Mike unintentionally had sent the F17 side formers of the smaller 1:5 version... In order to avoid delays, I decided to reproduce them myself but the only aircraft ply available on short notice was only 20” long. Thus I chose to asssemble the formers from four separate pieces as I wanted to make shure that there is no joint in the middle section where the wing fixture requires some extra care. Avoiding copying problems, I took the crucial measures from the plan, cross checked them with the laser cut pieces and drew the outline directly on the plywood. Before cutting I prepared second pieces and nailed them together with a piece of lite ply as a “lost working support”.

 

 

 

The first former was assembled on the plan and the second on top of the first in order to assure identical parts. As it finally turned out, my “repair work” was absolutely satisfactory and it fitted nicely into the build.

 

 

 

 

The fuselage assembly has started in the meantime – really!

 

Tom´s design and the precission of the laser cutting makes the assembly merely a sort of a well fitting puzzle as the earlier experience with the little 1-23 had shown. Therefore I decided to repeat the previous procedure by joining the lower front keel and former F5 as a reference for the following steps. If care is taken for all correct angles at this joint, the front formers and their stringers are added with little adjustments.

 

 

The “stanchions” support the rear formers and they allow an easy alignment of the rear part along a straight reference line on the building board. The side formers F17 were added  and glued in place only up to F7 with a special concentration to keep everything in 90° angles for a good fit of the wings.

 

In addition and not on the plan, I added diagonal braces between F5 and F7 in order to gain additional stiffness in this area. Further, I partially cut the side formers behind F7 to relieve the stress where they are bent inwards to the tapering fuselage rear end (of course I added gussets).

  

In the meantime, the fuselage looks quite “grown up”.  Glass fiber push rods are installed and the additional stringers will be added next and sheeting is imminent.

Comments

[Tom Martin]

Nice work Herbert!

As always you seem to make it appear quite simple which is my goal in designing the parts. Plus your solutions and insights to "customize" the kit of parts with gussets and cross bracing is well thought out and shows your years of experience in building.

I like your approach to framing up the fuselage and the joiner box solution. Will you also install Multi-Locks for retention of the wings?

Tom