Divergent kits
#33

Today is pretty much a repeat of yesterday so I'm not going to back through the steps. Once the second fuselage half is done and I have the shells joined the build part of the thread will begin. It actually starts with sheeting the bottom wing. Once the bottom wing is built it gets mounter to the fuselage and used as a baseline to get the upper wing and stab correctly aligned.
#35


Now that the second fuselage shell is done it is now time to glue all the formers and stab support in place. In order to do that I needed to make up the material that those parts are cut from. Fairly simple, I take 1/8" structural foam and vacuum bag fiberglass and carbon fiber skins to the foam. The parts are cut out on a Dremel scroll saw.
#42


How about some rough dimensions for servo positions and initial control surface cuts after sheeting, material choice [balsa or liteply] for the tube guides formers, preferred method for cutting the longer servo lead holes on the wings [I'm guessing an appropriately sized metal tube with serrations filed in the end will be ok]?
#45


Using the a wing fence/strut mount as a template, sand a groove into the 4 outter wing panels.

Make a master set of wing shucks. I had to mix and match a few inner and outer shucks until I got a set that matched. Here they have been glued together with Titebond. All wing sheeting will be done using this one pair of shucks.
#46


The lower wing cores are then glued together with Titebond. The lower wing gets sheeted first because the shucks will need to have 3.5" cut off the root end to sheet the upper wing.

To keep the cores straight while the glue dries, Top shucks are placed on the core and weighted down.
#47

Gooty, I buy the carbon fiber wing and stab tubes but make the sleeves out of fiberglass. I have found that the CF tubes fluxuate in size some so the sleeves are made from the exact tubes that get shipped with each kit. It's the only way to make sure the sleeves fit the tubes well.
#50


Root ribs for the upper wing panels and stabs were made today. The wing ribs are made out of medium balsa with doublers of fiberglass skinned foam. The stab roots are made from the glass skinned foam. The stab adjusters are held in place with CA and CF pins. The position of the stab adjusters and wing anti rotation pins is not critical, I just like to have them as far away from the wing/stab tubes as possible.