After finishing the tail planes it was time to digitally draw the fuselage. I decided to having a go at it and bought Devfus, a program that is still affordable for a hobbyist.
After a lot of messing around with terms on the screen that I had never heard of, I got familiar with some things! Unfortunately, sometimes drawings were suddenly put (by magic??) in a different folder and I could no longer open them in the drawing program (Yes, laugh ...) Thats why I drew the hull about three times, practice makes perfect they say ... Gradually I found out what is possible, it is easier to make a hull straight in a drawing than to sand frames down or glue some extra material on.
Here you see some of the drawings of the frames and
- Schermopname (128)kl.png (76.89 KiB) Viewed 3337 times
the placement of the frames and the 3d view of the fuselage.
I thought it would be convenient to use a central batten to align the frames. My friend Adri was kind enough to CNC the frames and he did it excellent. Just like with the Gull, I made a construction setup of a panel of chipboard to which I screwed 10 x 10mm battens at frame distances. I deliberately made a “jump” in it because I wanted to sheet parts of the hull on the construction setup. The tail at the top and the nose at the bottom.
In this way, it stays nice and straight and the stringers can be as thin as possible, to keep the weight of the tail down. Aligning the frames took a lot of time and I would like to hurry up, but I know sadly that errors in the frame setup are difficult to correct later .
One of the two main bulkheads is prepared so the wingjoiner can be slid through it.
Here is the 3X3mm spruce batten which slides through the centre of the frames,. I first wanted to screw them on the jig, but clamps actually do it better.
I first glued in both stringers left and right and then made the wide bottom (keel?) stringer, where the landing skate will be attached later.
So nice that the frames were “aligned” ( Ican’t find the correct word for that), I didn't have to sand them much! Designing took quite a bit of effort, but this was very satisfying.
It's starting to look like a fuselage!
Vincent