Guys,

many thanks for the recommendations and suggestions. I'll keep all of them in mind.

Although it doesn't look like much, Imanaged to get a fair amount done in the last couple of evenings (despite having the flu).

First, Ipaired down the fuse another fair amount. Now it has the correct shape - top and bottom. Tuck lines remain to be done but they will be last once everything else is done - particularly the installation of the motor as this will slightly alter the width at the nose. Before doing the tuck line, the fuse sides must be flush with the canopy.

I pulled the canopy loose and proceeded to figure out the internals - radio tray and battery/esc tray. These two things took an entire evening. It's when you get to these little details that working on models this size requires abundant patience! In any event, it's done. The radio tray consists of a small 1/16" ply plate holding the rudder servo in the back (P-P setup) and the elevator servo in front of it. Although I typically mount these in reverse order in order to avoid cross over of the P-Pcables on the elevator shaft, here it was necessary to invert the order to allow the elevator servo to be mounted on its side where the fuse is sufficiently wide (barely). As you can see, the operation of the elevator pushrod happens on the interior side of the servo to locate the pushrod on the C/L. The main Rx (Spektrum AR 6200) was going to reside just in front of the elevator servo but there isn't quite enough clearance between the connectors and the aileron pushrods emerging from the wing center section. A simple solution will be to invert the order of main and aux Rx's by locating the main on the fuse top (floor when inverted) and the auxiliary on the radio plate. This works out nicely.

I also got the wings joined, glassed (6 oz x 1" followed by 3/4 oz x 3") and the servo center box installed. The servo's sit with their control arms flush with the wing top and are mounted flush with the fuse sides (this all required measuring everything 5 times in different ways!) with their control arms toward the center. The outer portion of the arms lines up nicely with the torque rods which reside in between the two wing hold down bolts and fit in the recess of the hold down plate. When mounted, the wing servos sit just forward of the aux Rx and aft of the battery/esc plate.

The radio tray was installed at the tuck line level in order to locate the elevator pushrod on the thrust line and parallel all the way to the control horns on the elevators. I would recommend lowering this another 3/8" - 1/2" in order to provide more clearance for pushrods among the different controls. As it is, everthing clears but just so.

The Battery/ESC plate was cut to 15 x 3 cm and installed on the thrust line. While it would ideally be a little lower in the fuse to locate the battery's CG in line with the motor (taking into account the thickness of the battery), it turns out this is the perfect location from a layout standpoint. The ESC sits on the underside in between F2 and the front of the plate leaving some room in the front for mounting screws and rails. The battery sits atop the plate and can be moved back and forth about half a battery length - hopefully this will be enough to locate correct CG. As it stands, it feels like the model will balance nicely with the battery located more forward where convenient for swapout.

I installed the radio tray with a single cross rail in the front and two sliders on each side at the rear into which the tray slides in. A single servo screw holds the plate down on the cross rail preventing the tray from shifting in any direction. For the battery/esc tray, two simple cross rails hold it in place with the rail on top in the rear (screwed down from beneath) and on the bottom on the front (screwed down from the top battery/motor bay. The firewall will be bonded in place in front of the tray and will hold the motor in a conventional manner with standoffs. I'm hoping the prop adapter will be sufficiently long to allow me to keep the can further back and away from the nose ring. If needed, the nose ring can be widened another 5 mm in diameter to provide ~4mm clearance around the motor can. This is just the front end where the motor approaches the nose rings. Ample space behind the rings is available for the can to rotate without binding from the fuse chin or canopy (hollowed out as per plans).

Whew! That should be enough for one post. Here are some pics. As mentioned, the location of the Rx's as shown is not final. Ialso set the servo installation up with HS-55's which Ihad around but will likely be replaced before the maiden for better ones (of the same dimension).

David.