saramos

Ok, here are the results of taking measurements of 799 at the Planes of Fame museum. Danny and I went there a couple of weekends ago and made measurements of a number of stations along the fuselage. The method we used was with a plumb bob. We held the plumb line against the fuselage and intersected the stations at their widest width on one side of the plane, and marked the point on the ground that was plumb. We repeated this on the other side of the fuselage and then measured between the two points, giving a measurement of the station. Some of the stations listed in the chart we could not measure because they were blocked by the wing or stab. I then took all the measurements and plotted them in a vector graphics program. I then created a smooth line that intersected as many of the pints as possible. Two points were off by 1/8" which I suspect are errors in the measurement as a result of wind or marking the spots on the ground. Also, you will see that the biggest error was with station 288. The tail gear doors prevented us from using the plumb bob directly at the station. I saw two ways to work around the door. One is to take a measurement just a little forward of 288 to clear the door. I did this at a previous visit. This day, we used a spacer to get beyond the door. We subtracted twice the value of the width of the spacer and wrote the result down. We did not write down the raw distance measured, and I can only surmise that we made an error in measuring the spacer (a roll of masking tape) or when we doubled that measurement. The measurement that I took on a previous visit matched very closely to the point on the smooth line. These results also match the values which I derived from the few drawings which have some dimensions which can be used for scaling the drawings. The second and third columns are measurements of the distance from the thrust line to the top and bottom of each station. These were derived from the scaled factory drawings. The smooth width values also match the scaled drawings very well.

Station______TL_-Top_____TL_-_Bottom___Measured_Width___Smooth_Width____Differe nce
16.6875______26.25_______-26.25________52.5_____________52.5____________0
40.094_______27.0625_____-27.0625______54.125___________54.125__________0
54.125_______27.5________-27.5_________53.625___________53.5____________0.12 5
91.75________30__________-6.5__________53.5_____________53.5____________0
103.625______30.75_______-26.5_________Not_Measured_____52.75___________n/a
120.5________31.75_______-26.5_________Not_Measured_____52.375__________n/a
134__________32.5________-26.375_______Not_Measured_____52______________n/a
138.6________19.5________-26.25________Not_Measured_____51.875__________n/a
186__________45 _________-24.5_________46.75____________46.75___________0
218__________42.125______-22___________41.625___________41.5____________0.12 5
232__________40__________-20.75________39_______________39______________0
253__________36.875______-18.25________34.75____________34.75___________0
288__________31.75_______-13___________27.8125__________27______________0.81 25
310.65625____28.25_______-9____________Not_Measured_____21.5625_________n/a
346.25_______22.75_______-1.75_________Not_Measured_____12.21875________n/a
371.5________18.875______4.25__________5.0625_____ ______5.0625__________0


Scott