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An infill piece was added into the large hole before 2 part body filler was applied…..a second coat will probably be required.
I had roughly shaped the bottom of the fuselage and wanted to add a cooling hole for the electrics, so this was marked out….
Then cut and sanded to shape…..
Finally for now, the hatch for the underside of the nose area was made up from a spruce frame and Proskin. I may add additional cooling slots later….
So after a bit of sanding the cowl was ready for spraying with primer…….
While the primer dried, I moved onto the tailwheel, once again out of my spares box……
A 1/4 ply mounting plate was made up and epoxied in place and the rudder fitted using my preferred pin hinges. The tailwheel assemble was then screwed into place.
The motor was mounted and adjusted for spacing, note the aluminium spacers behind the bolts……
Then the cowl was offered up and screwed into place using the spinner as a reference. Note the yellow high fill primer used on the cowl.
So more progress on and off this week in between getting the fleet ready for resumption of flying. Due to the shape of the top part of the cowl, I had to rethink the top part of the fuselage and the to match access hatch to match so the old section was removed and a new one added……
And from the other side……note the holes for the locating dowels from the hatch which I was able to keep the same spacing on…..
Next the hatch was carved to shape to match the new profile and a filler piece added to allow for the height difference…..
Once dry the whole thing was carved and sanded to shape……got to say I’m pleased with how it came out.
With the completion of the nose area fairing, the construction of the plane is essentially complete apart from the tray that will hold the battery and to complete that I need to figure out where in the fuselage it will go. In order to do that I need to get an idea how the model will balance and to find that out I need to dry assemble it with all the electronics, control surfaces, retracts etc. To start with, the ailerons were shaped, hinged and the linkages made up…..
Next the rudder and elevator…..elevator shown here.