RCU Forums - View Single Post - PBY Catalina (Vintage Plans) Build Thread
Old 02-09-2020, 08:42 AM
  #83  
Joe-RCBuilder
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On to the wing!

What looks on the surface to be a fairly simple wing is actually more complex than I had expected. A large center area is constant chord. Two outer panels are tapered. The top of the wing is flat tip to tip (no dihedral), but the bottom of the tapered sections do taper up to the tip. A narrow center section is fixed to the pylon with 2 removable sections (typical). But the removable sections contain both constant chord and tapered sub-sections. And the wing uses a slightly semi-symmetrical airfoil. The center section embeds the 2 nacelles. Typically, the nacelles are built separately (like on my A-26) because they are quite large holding the main landing gear. Here the nacelles are small and they are designed integrally with the wing spar. I've decided to build the wing in 5 sections. The 2 outer sections of each side will be joined once built. The center section will be built "in the air" right on the pylon. This is only possible because a key section of the spar is already part of the pylon and the designer created interlocking parts. Even still, a lot of dry fitting and aligning while clamping was required. Here's some picts of the right outer panel and the center section on the fuse.