With the fuselage skinning now completed (remembering to fit the rudder C/L wire guide tubes before it’s too late) and the skid fitted, the fuselage is looking nearly complete.
A little filler has been used to smooth over the skin section overlapped joints, which are particularly noticable at the nose due to the greater angles between sections & greater tendency for the skin sections to take a straight line in the fore/aft direction.
I fitted some 1/8” balsa plates around the rudder C/L wire guide tube fin exits & then used these to support the rearmost ply skin sections, having slotted these to fit over the protruding tubes.
The rear skid area is blocked up with balsa & then sanded to profile to allow the rearmost skin sections to be attached all the way to the bottom. A ply strip can then be fitted to the bottom when both sides have been skinned.
The nose skid was pre-bent to shape by running a trickle of freshly boiled water over both sides of the forward section for a few seconds (which made it quite pliable) then holding in place on the upturned fuselage whilst the wood cools & dries out.
I glued hardwood blocks between the keel pieces at front, rear & just forward of centre to allow the skid to be glued and screwed in place.
(I found that the skid supplied for the 2b version was about 10mm too short, so glued a small ply extension at the rear. The CNC file has now been updated to increase the length.)
The wing joiners have now been cut to length, so an overall dry assembly can be done to see how much church roof can safely be squirrelled away in the nose cone before this (& the tow release) is permanently fixed in place.
Weather permitting, I will try to get this done tomorrow.
- Skinned fuselage
- Rudder C/L tube exit
- Nose skid fitted