Mindwarp

My ankle's finally feeling better now, so it was time to test out the basement stairs and complete the sheeting of the fuselage.

Fuselage Sheeting

So the last time I posted build progress I'd just completed sheeting the cowl and the front of the fuselage. First order of the day was therefore sheeting back to the cockpit firewall. In order to make sheeting the cockpit easier I glued a piece of 1/4" square balsa from the control panel to the cockpit backing along the center line of the fuselage. This will be partially removed when the cockpit opening is cut, and will be trimmed away from the edge of the cockpit so that it is no longer visible. The sheeting was cut back about 1/16" from the front of the control panel in order to provide a lip for the cockpit sheeting to be glued to.

Looking at the cockpit it became apparent that I'd need to cut a gradual curve into the leading edge of the sheeting to accomodate the rearward slope of the cockpit. I'd never done this before, and so decided to make a paper template of the required curve before cutting the balsa. I lightly sprayed a sheet of paper with contact adhesive and tacked it down over the fuselage side. I then traced the outline of the fuselage opening onto the paper, pealed the paper off, layed it on top of the balsa sheeting, then cut a left and right side panel using the template.

Once the side panels were glued in the template process was then repeated for the top section of cockpit sheeting. Special care was taken when fitting the top sheeting to make sure that the joins between the left and right panels and the top sheeting were correctly aligned. Once the sheeting pieces were flush the joins were glued using thin CA.

Cheers,
Neil.