I am currently in the process of building the Top Flite P47 and I am stuck hoping some experienced builders can help me out.

Background
I don't consider myself a complete newb. I have been flying for 3 years and assembled countless ARF's, but only built 1 1/2 kits. The complete kit I built was a Sig Somethin Extra (99% complete pic attached). The 1/2 kit was another SSE that was in bad shape that a friend partially built. You can see it in the background of the P47 pic (currently awaiting covering).

The Problem
As you can see in the pic the top half of the fuse is complete minus sheeting. The problem is the first step of sheeting requires a shaped piece of 3/32 sheeting and says to refer to the plan for placement. I have 2 sets of plans, 1 for building and one hung on the wall. I do not see anywhere on the plans for placement of this piece. The second problem is neither piece of this shaped sheeting matches up to the ledge it is to be glued to(bottom edge along the fuse half bottom). It seems it should be flat along the edge but is curved along the length of the fuse. If I trim the sheet to fit, it would the be too short to match/ glue to the stringers. Am I just completely missing something here or is there a problem with my sheeting? Also the ledge is 3/16. Is the sheeting supposed to be flush witht the ledge or against the stringers and formers and sanded flush later? The instructions are very vague here

Thanks in advance for any help or advice. I can post more pics of the problems if needed.

I am building this kit, and I am a little farther then you.

In the directions on page 18, steps 4 and 5 show decent pics of what is needed. You have to add an inch or so length to make the sheeting long enough(pic 5 shows this). Yes, the ledge at the bottom will stick out past the sheeting and get sanded later. In pic 2(on page 18) you can see the sheeting butted up against the lower ledge and the sheeting ending in the middle of a stringer.

I hope this helped you, kind of difficult to describe

Thanks emort, that answers one question. I will try to muscle the sheeting to overcome the the curvature on the bottom. Currently soaking and bending the sheet. We'll see how it goes

for bending balsa a 50/50 mix of denatured alcohol and water goes a long way in a spray bottle, old stain lifter spray bottles work well if you don't want to buy a bottle just for this wood glue doesn't work on wet wood but CA will tack it down even when wet.

Wow, we are on parallel paths here. I started working on a TF P-47, but have put in on the shelf to work on other projects, most recently a Sig SSE.

Anyway, +1 on Windex to soften the balsa for bending. As you know by now, this fuselage sheeting on this model has a bit of compound curve to it making it harder to get into place than it first looks. I strongly recommend using something like Titebond to attach the sheeting, It will give you more time to work while wrestling it into place.

You can check out some photos on my blog at http://alsrcsite.com/2012/02/04/tf-p...ion-continues/. Its been almost 2 years since I have worked on the P-47, but I left off just slightly past where you are now.

the biggest problem with using tight bond for gluing down sheeting on the fuse is getting it to tack down when wet, if you haven't sheeted the fuse yet then I would use Med CA to glue the 3/32 wood to the mid line stringer then spray your water/windex whatever you decide on the section you are directly working on and gradually work the wood around the curve using the CA to glue it down as you bend it into place, excess wood can be trimmed off or sanded away I used the center line stringers as a guide there is some technique for sure but keeping the wood wet helps on the outside of the sheeting, and aliphatic resin doesn't like water.

another related note when you sheet the wings I would dump the 1/16 balsa sheets in the kit, and buy some 3/32 balsa you won't regret it, the thinner balsa has a tendency to want to ripple at the leading edge, and when I built mine I had to do allot of filling to remove the scalloped effect at the wing ribs that I got from using the thinner wood, if you pick light pieces of wood you may end up with a lighter wing than using the stock material,mine has retractable tail wheel,and is glassed with water based polyurathane, all the insignia's are painted on using stencils, its powered by a OS 120 4 stroke.