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I made my rotisserie way earlier than the
plans said to, and, made it quite tall. When I got to the steps where
it was time to glass the bottom and the sides, it was too tall. I
shortened it to the look you see here. It's just tall enough for the
fuselage to roll over unimpeded. |
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Another shot of the rotisserie. It has
three legs on either end, 1x4 long boards to keep the ends aligned and stop
them from flexing outward. I put a piece of 6 mil plastic on the floor
underneath. It gets trashed and covered with epoxy drips instead of my
floor. |
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For whatever reason, I didn't
take a lot of photos of the fuselage contouring when I was doing it. I
used a combination of a belt sander, Stanley Shurform plane and a 2x4 with
sandpaper (two sheets) glued onto it with spray adhesive. I also made
the template that the plans specified and worked slowly up and down.
Not a big deal, but, messy and time consuming. I think I liked the
Surform plane the most - took off a lot of material at once but allowed you
to work your way up and down the fuselage. |
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Here's a shot of the other side
after contouring. This was actually quite a fun step to do. |
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I might be overdoing some of
the steps on this aircraft, but, I really like to use the tools I've been
able to collect over the years. Rather than sand a 1/16" depression
around the landing brake like the plans say, I used my router, set against a
straightedge with weights holding it down, to route a 1/16" depression.
It ends up have a square edge, which I'll have to sand later, but, the
depression is exactly 1/16" consistently all around the landing brake where
it was done. |
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The wood insert for the step
installed. |
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Here's the tape applied around
the landing brake to give space before the next layup. It was a couple
of months between when I applied this and when I used it - and the fuselage
was upside down for part of the time - and the tape fell off on the floor!
Had to do it over... |
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I use a lot of double stick
tape building this airplane. Sorry, but, I can't bring myself to put
bondo on the nice pieces of airplane I make. It takes a little
patience to get the stuff off when you're ready to remove it, but, if you
exert steady pressure it all comes off and comes off clean. |
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I, too, bought the kit from RST
(see the
reference page for the title of the document) to build antennas.
Here's the setup for routing a channel in the bottom, in the location I
picked for the marker beacon, ready for the router. |
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This picture shows the channel
I routed for the antenna foil. I set the depth real shallow (this foil
is thousandths of an inch thick) and it turned out real nice. You
could probably get away without the channel, but, I hadn't done this before
and didn't want to take any chances of the foil getting damaged in the next
steps. Hindsight tells me you could just stick the foil on (be careful
when you do the micro and lay the glass on in the next couple of steps) and
it would be just fine. |
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Here's a shot of the RG-58
routed to the front of the instrument panel with a nice curve to avoid sharp
bends. I again used my router to do this - set the depth to just make
room for the cable and laid straight and curved edges to run the router
against. |
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Another shot of the whole
antenna. I think it turned out very nice. Looking forward to
hearing beep beep beep beep beep beep BEEP BEEP BEEP beep beep beep beep
beep beep etc. |
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Here's a close up of the RG-58
joined to the copper foil. I soldered this up on the workbench then
installed it after that. The blue and yellow foam is scraps from
previous steps keeping the ferrite donuts separated the right amount without
too much fuss. |
| Next step is
Glassing the Bottom |
