Wednesday, April 30, 2014

Almost an ARC.

I glued the pieces together today. I had the flaps and elevators mated to their horns and removeable from the horns. I had glued a 4-40 nut onto the flap pushrod so I can use the nut driver tool to r & r the pushrod. It's a pain to count turns and install it using a pair of pliers. I cut a drinking straw from McDonald's to fit over the ball link on the bellcrank and jam the bellcrank full forward and then remove the pushrod and fit the straw end into the pushrod cutout to hold the bellcrank in position for the trip through the fuselage cutout and to hold the ball link in place for the re installation of the pushrod. I generally do this with the wing fully sheeted and not being able to see the ball link.  I cut the bellcrank pivot rod 1/8" longer than the wing is thick so it will stick out 1/16" on top and bottom so I can put a brace on the wing sheeting and the rod and fuselage sides. As the rod gets to the fuselage side I push the rod down to sheeting level and flex the thinnest side over the rod and push it back up inside the fuselage so the other end will slip through. Nothing new there. After truing the wing to the fuselage I tack it in several places. Then I install the pushrod into the ball link. I only go a couple turns before twisting the straw to check that it's free. If it isn't free to turn remove the pushrod because it got threaded between the straw and the ball link. Put the push rod back in and try to twist the straw again, repeat as necessary until the straw is free then turn the pushrod in the number of turns you counted when you removed it. You didn't think of that did you? I didn't and that's why I put it there instead of at the beginning. in this case I needed 15 turns to reinstall the pushrod. What this does is give you the strongest fuselage possible as there isn't any cuts to scab over after the wing is installed.
  I've tried several different ways to true up the wing to the fuselage over the years and stumbled on this method today. I have four pieces of marble broken from the same large piece and two of the biggest ones are under the smaller two that the wing is resting on. The engine crutch area of the fuselage is the only parallel part of the whole thing so I put two framing squares on the marbles next to the wing panels and wiggled the fuselage until it mated to the squares. A couple glue tacks and I'm done. I rechecked the alignment with a tail to wing tip measurement and it's good. Any flat board with a hold in it for the nose can be used.






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