RE: s/m 1/6 f16 in my hot little hands!
I don't know who was building this F-16...........but "I HEARD" a little voice from somewhere say that one of the ways someone could have mounted those pylons into the wing is by very carefully marking the spots for the holes and then making a small boxed templete with a hole in the middle which matches the hole for each spot on the wing. Then, very very carefully cut out the squares on the bottom of the wing and using kevlar cloth and small blocks of wood which have a slight curve to them (as not to cause lumps in the wing skin later through temperature expansion and contraction; V-poxy could be painted onto the inside of the upper wing skin and kevlar cloth then laid down in there to soak up the v-poxy and cure............while that is still wet the little block of wood which has been pre drilled and fitted with a threaded insert could be AEROPOXYIED at the end where it mounts to the kevlar cloth and then the same little square that was cut out at the bottom of the wing fitted back on very carefully and then the bolt screwed in slightly and the assembly left to dry.............kind of like using that little piece of bottow wing skin as a jig. After that drys the little piece of bottom wing skin is removed and then a bead of aeropoxy is applied with a special shaped little l shape tool made from thin balsa or polyply........that bead extends out just a bit into the gap around the block of wood and the wing skin, then very carefully another bead is put around the edges of the inside of the little piece of bottom wing skin so that the glue meets with itself when the wing skin square is returned to its position in the bottom of the wing.......(a small smear....and i mean small goes on the little block of wood (hardpoint) edges as not to get it inside the threaded insert. After this is all left to dry........fiberglass resin filler (Evercoat) or something of that sort is finally smeared into the fine line gap around the square on the bottom of the wing and sanded smooth and painted (keeping a piece of paper or a bolt in the threaded hole of course.) Now.......that sounds like a fair amount of work to me and probably is........"I WOULD'NT WANNA DO THAT!" but..........I found some pictures mysteriously that kind of explain what that little voice must have been trying to tell me...........make sense? (I know, me either) Each store is now supported using the top and bottow wing skins as not to cause any lateral or longitudinal distortion of the wing...........or at least it seems that way...............but then again............I dunno........interesting pics though.