Well, at least I had good intentions. After last weekend I had told myself that I needed to keep up with this build and thread. Well, at least I kept half of that promise. I was able to keep working on the build, but unfortunately I got behind thread once again. I do apologize once again to all of those that are following this thread. Time to make up for some lost time. In my last post I finished the wing and was ready to get started on the fuselage of the plane next.

Even though we inventoried everything at the beginning build, it doesn't hurt to pull everything out and make sure you know every part (picture #1). If you didn't do it when we inventoried it's a good idea to stop and mark all the fuselage formers so that you know which way is the front of the former as well as the top of each piece (picture #2). Trust me, it's really easy to put one of these in upside down or backwards, and once the glue sets it's too late to pull it out and turn it around. Trust me, this is the voice of experience speaking. I've done exactly that in a past build and it's easier to take a few minutes to mark the parts now instead of spending hours trying to fix it later after the glue has set. Picture #3 shows the edges of the parts and they are rough from being cut. Use a sanding block to lightly sand the edges of each piece so it's smooth (picture #4 and #5). But make sure you only use light pressure as you sand, you just want to take to edge off the part not change the shape of the part.

Ok, we're going to do a little bit extra on this build. One thing that I just don't like to do is run the antenna wire on the outside of the fuselage. I just think that it's so much cleaner of a look to run it inside of the fuselage. When you get an ARF it can be a real pain to route the antenna inside the fuselage, unless they have already provided you with a tube to do that. But since we are building the plane here it's really easy to add it in. Trust me, it's a lot easier to prepare the formers for this now than it is once the formers are in the plane. I'm going to use some scrap tubing I have laying around as an antenna tube. What I am going to use it actually some old pushrod material that I had in my scrap box, but it will work just fine here. All you really need is a tube big enough for you antenna wire to run through, you can see the tubing in picture #8. The first thing that you need to do in running your antenna inside of you fuselage is decide exactly where you want it to run inside. For this plane I plan on running it along the bottom of the fuselage, and will have it exit and be anchored at the rear of fuselage on the bottom. Since I now know where I plan on running my tube, it's pretty easy from here on out. In picture #6 you can where I have marked each former (F3, F4, F5, & F6) where I plan on drilling the hole for my antenna tube. Picture #9 and #10 show both the formers after they have been drilled and how the tube will look once it's installed in the former. We're not going to install the tube at this point, in fact I won't actually put it in until the fuselage it glued together. I am only drilling the holes in the formers now because its a heck of a lot easier to drill the holes in the formers BEFORE they are installed in the fuselage, in fact about the only way you can drill the holes after the fuselage it assembled is to have a right angle drill head attachment for a Dremel® rotary tool.

I'm going to wrap this post up for now. Don't worry, I will have more posted today.

Pictures
1.All of the fuselage parts layed out.
2. Make sure the formers are labeled for the top and front of each piece.
3. Parts will have a rough edge as they come out of the parts sheets.
4. Using fine sandpaper and a sanding block to remove the rough edge.
5. Edge sanded clean. Don't sand too much and alter the shape of the part.
6. Formers F3, F4, F5, and F6 layed out and marked to drill for installation of an antenna tube.
7. Formers after antenna tube holes have been drilled
8. Using an old pushrod for an antenna tube
9. Temporarily installed antenna tube.


Until next time

Ken