From what I have heard, just about all of us have been having less than ideal flying weather recently. Here in the Pacific Northwest we don’t get much snow, and it seldom freezes, but we have more than enough gray, rainy windy weather to share with the rest of the world. Just last Saturday, (the […]
As with a lot of older kits, there isn’t a lot of specific detail on the drawings to show you how the lower wing and landing gear are supposed to be attached to the rest of the fuselage. (The same goes for the upper wing and cabane struts, too, but we’ll talk about that later.) […]
Let’s get started on the fuselage. This kit is “old time traditional” in that the fuselage consists of two identical side frames built up of “sticks” (3/16″ sq. balsa) which are subsequently joined by more 3/16″ sq. in the form of crossmembers. Once the basic “box” structure is established, we add formers cut to specific […]
The next step is the addition of the leading edge sheeting and the capstrips to the wing structure. All of the assembly up to this point has been done with the wing flat on the building board, kept in alignment by various built-in jigs and spacers and held in place by those big lead building […]
OK…now it’s time to get started on something that will make it clear just how BIG this model really is…let’s build the wing. As it turns out, even if my workbench were long enough to lay out both the right and left panels of the wing at the same time, I would have to walk […]
The vertical tail assembly…the fixed vertical fin and the rudder…are built in the same way as the horizontal tail. That building task also presents me with a chance to talk about some of the reasons those parts are designed, or engineered, the way they are. You could build all the tail surfaces on this airplane […]
The lower wing main panels have been assembled to the center section, the 1/16″ balsa sheet skin has been added, and the ailerons have been built in place. Now it’s time to do all the final shaping and sanding. I have finished sanding the upper wing surface to shape and fine sanded it to the […]
As I got close to finishing the lower wing it became obvious that an important detail of kit engineering had been overlooked. The plans indicate that the entire lower wing center section as well as the innermost rib bay of each lower wing outer panel are to be sheeted with 1/16″ balsa. The usual method […]
The outboard (main) panels of the lower wing are built the same way as the upper wing, with two changes. The upper panels are swept back and have no ailerons, while the lower panels are straight with ailerons cut in. Just as with the upper wing, I spaced the front and rear spars off the […]
Let’s get started on the lower wing. Unlike the upper wing, which consists of two outboard panels which are each swept back in relation to a center section, the lower wing is straight (unswept) , but the outer panels still attach to a center section which is built separately. With the upper wing I had […]