Whew! This cryogenic freeze thing isn't all it's cracked up to be.

Really though, all sorts of stuff jumped ahead of this project. There was the little matter of finishing the design and construction of the full scale 1910 Hudson Flier, then the 1/4 scale version, then getting the Pup back in the air, then maidening the DR1, then finishing the design and starting the construction of the 1910 AVRO Triplane. All good things.

Ok. So, where was I?

Custom Fuselage Deck

The Aeromaster is tall (deep inside) but not super wide. It's tighter in there than you'd think. (At least I thought.) The design calls for the cap in the front of the fuselage to be built up permanently. There is space under there but it would be a bear to get to. So I decided to make the cap removable. I just tacked the formers in place and added the balsa planks as called for but did not glue them to the fuse, just to each other. I made just one former for underneath because I wanted to preserve as much open space as Icould. The formers seem unnecessary anyway. The decking isn't thin sheet but 1/4 planks. It's pretty strong.

I glued in four lengths of spruce scrap and added 4-40 blind nuts to them. Idrilled matching holes in the removable cap and covered them with scrap thin ply so the screws wouldn't sink into the softer balsa. As you can see, there are other holes in the sides of the cap are reinforced with ply. These are for switches. (More on that later.) Filler was then used in the transitions.

I used the kit's former for the end that makes up the front of the cockpit. The tab fits into the slot that was supposed to be glued. The cockpit side sticks had to be angled so the cap can be removed but that wasn't a big deal. The cap goes on nice and easy and securely.

Next, sanding and filling, sanding and filling, sanding .....