|
Fuselage Exterior
This chapter starts out with gluing the foam
together for the bottom. Here you can see the landing brake cut out.
It will be put back in place for glassing later.
The next step is to shape the fuse with clark foam.
It is much easier to sand than PVC. 
Once the the countour is finished, It is trimmed and
floxed onto the fuselage bottom. Then urethane foam is used to shape the
NACA scoop. This scoop is used to provide cooling air for the
engine. First I micro'd blocks of urethane and weighted them down. 
The next step is to carve the urethane to shape and
continue the shape of the fuselage bottom 
Next, I glassed the inside of the scoop.
This is where the fun begins with the dreaded joggle. 
Next, I installed the Nav and OMB antennae,
then built up the area around the landing brake with duct tape. 
When it came time to shape the fuse sides, read the
archives and such and came up with this. 
The jig is made from 3, 3/4" thick templates with
formica epoxied to them. Then I used 3m spray adhesive to glue 36 grit
paper to the jig. This worked great! Here are the results
It is mentioned in the archives that the Brock step may
not have the same contour as the fuse bottom. To make sure shape was the
same I sanded the birch reinforcement to match the step. Then installed
the birch before glassing the bottom. 
I used duct tape to set up the where I wanted sides to
lap. I wet out the sides about 1/2" onto the tape, then cut the glass
to the edge of the tape and removed the tape.
The next step is to lay up the sides with 3 plys of UNI
and 3 plys reinforcement on the upper longeron and engine hardpoint. 
| 
