JC's Planes and Projects

Fuselage Construction

Here is the fuselage just before the right side sheeting was applied. The fuse is built right over the plans with the right side down. The front motor/gear mount with the two machine cut holes and the rear wing mounts (with the other set of holes) were among the few pre-cut parts. Everything else you see in this picture is from sheet and stick balsa cut and fitted by yours truly. The middle two lengthwise balsa sheets are the critical fuselage crutches. They dictate the shape of the fuselage taper. Make the top crutch first and then make the lower to match it identically. Note that the entire fuse is built up at a 2" width and then you have to saw, plane, sand, scrape, and gouge the rest of the many crosspieces to the shape dictated by the crutches. This took a couple of evening per side!

There was insufficient width in the fuselage to "stagger" the servos in height to avoid the servo arms from colliding. I added the front servo rail to mount the throttle servo and thus give the two elevator and one rudder servo room to operate. If you use Hitec 605s like I did, you will have to do something like this or settle for 3/8" of control surface movement - hardly adequate for 3D flying!

Pull-pull cables control the rudder and the two independent elevator halves. That is six cable runs fellow modelers! I found it very helpful to install the servos first and mark where the arms would be. I then built a guide out of hardwood at the rear of the servo access hatch from which all cables will start their runs. I then marked where I wanted the pull-pulls to exit and used a yardstick to try to line up the cables. This is one of the many places were you just have to use your best judgement. The instructions and plans give you very little guidance on this other than to say, "don't make this hard." I kept muttering that line during the two evenings it took me to finish this task (sarcastic tone here).

Here is the roughed-in fuse showing servo hatch and mounting rails, wing dowel holes, and motor mounts. It reminds one of very light trophy-sized salmon. Note that I deviated from the plans in that I affixed the sheeting to both sides as one piece instead of planking the right side. Planking the right side with individual sheets would have been very tedious and yielded poor results in the form of poorly matched edges. The only motivation for planking the right side is so you can locate the pull-pull exits. I just made a template of the exit positions and transferred it to the sheeting that I had cut to fit. This resulted in a very nice, smooth, sheeted structure. Oh, the instructions don't tell you what sheeting to use on the fuse - only that it is 3/32". I just grabbed some sheets and edge-joined and scarf-joined them together until I had a piece big enough. I may run out of balsa somewhere down the line but heck, I have already been to the local HS twice to buy extra wood for this project! That's right sportsfans, after spending $250.00 bucks for this kit I had to buy extra wood!