Day one:
Day two:
So checked my building board with a 48" straightedge to be
sure it was flat, which it was. I rolled out the plans onto my
building board, covered them with wax paper, and laid out my tools to
get started. It was after I taped the plans down that I remembered it
would be nice to have a copy without pinholes but I am too eager to
get started to bother going to Kinkos.
The first step is to pull the basswood spars out
of the box o' sticks and cut them to length. The basswood stands out
from the similarly sized balsa because it is heavier and feels
sturdier. Be sure to check you are using the basswood! I like to
measure the spars directly over the plans using a sheet metal right
angle guage and my mechanical pencil.
I then take the marked spar(s) over to my mitre box, which
is clamped into a vise, and then cut so the kerf of the blade just
cuts through the pencil line. In this case I got an exact length
spar. If I was concerned about cutting the piece too short I would
have left the pencil line and then sanded the piece to fit. Because
of the tilt of the #3 ribs the upper spar will be slightly too long,
so it will need to be sanded at a later time. 
One of the beauties of a laser cut kit is the conformity of
the ribs once they pop out of the carrier. On my first kit build I
was assured that my die cut kit was cut using sharp, new dies. Let me
tell ya, there is nothing like building from a laser cut kit. These
babies just popped right out and required just a smidge of sanding,
whereas my die cut kit required all sorts of cutting and careful
manipulation to get them off the carrier. The instructions say some
people recommend that you can lightly sand the ribs to remove the
charring for better adhesion, but I did not bother.
On my last build the instructions specifically said to
build the spar and set the ribs one shear web/rib pair at a time.
With laser cut shear webs I think this becomes less of an issue, so
the instructions said to just ensure that they were right on the plan
and are perpendicular. Taking your time here will pay dividends when
inserting the shear webs, as I discovered later.
So at the end of the first day, only about an hour into the
build here is what the center section of the wing looks like. I did
not take a picture of adding the trailing edge, but it was done
before gluing the ribs to the spar and was as easy as cutting it to
length and then pinning it over the plans.
Day three:
One of the things us builders often do is make specific
tools for accomplishing repetitive or difficult tasks. On my last
build I had a challenge of cutting each shear web and then sanding it
down so there were no gaps. I can't tell you how many ribs I knocked
the top off of and then had to CA back into place. So in advance of
that adventure I took one of the cut offs from the spar, took a
couple of swipes on each side with some sandpaper (to make it just
slightly smaller than the spar notches in the ribs) and then stuck on
some 120 grit paper. Another fuzzy picture, but the idea is to use
this little tool to shape the spar notches if necessary or to sand
down any protruding shear webs.
After the ribs are added, the instructions call for adding
the leading edge. Now there are quite a few square looking balsa
sticks so I had to pull all of them out and measure carefully to
choose the right one. It may be coincidence or may be by design, but
the balsa was a hard balsa stick which is just perfect for a ding-
prone leading edge. Here is where I had my first challenge with the
build. Getting the stick to sit into the ribs perfectly without any
gaps was close to impossible without seriously applying pressure, the
kind of pressure that can warp a wing. So I did the best I could to
ensure there was a pretty good fit. I looked after the wing had dried
and saw just some tiny gaps (thousandths wide), but they will
probably need to be filled with balsa dust and CA. I will see how
strong this is with one side of the sheeting before deciding whether
to fix it or not.
Ok, no pictures of the shear webs. When I said earlier that
you must position the ribs exactly over the plan, well the shear webs
are designed to fit *exactly* in one size space. I would highly
recommend building this wing one shear web and rib at a time because
I had to make three shear webs out of extra 1/16" stock because I had
the ribs just slightly (.021") too far apart. I cannot stand for a
flimsy, gappy or weak wood-wood joint in the spar, so I made sure to
replace shear webs rather than chance any gaps. This also meant that
I had to do a few swipes of sandpaper on a few other ribs since they
were then a little oversized, which is not a big deal. In one of the
shear webs I made I did end up with a little gap at the top between
the shear web and the upper spar. When I added the upper spar I put
on a bunch of weights and let it dry and then I took the wing off the
building board and clamped that particular section. No more air gaps.
:) 
So here is the completed spar. When I lifted this off the building
board I could not believe how light it was. I think this may be a
reaction to the "heft" of my Marauder center section, which is fully
covered and assembled. So I think it is all in my mind at this point.
One reminder for anyone building this plane. There are
quite a few shear webs left over in the carrier, presumably in case
you make a mistake. Do not think you have to glue them next to Rib#3
at the end of the center section. These you leave blank, at least for
now. The kit comes with some dacron to wrap this "joiner box",
although I think I will use some kevlar thread I have. 
Finally today I added the built up trailing edge. I took out my hated
razor plane (what a waste of $7). I adjusted it as best I could to
take off some paper thin curls of balsa, but the thing is such a
piece of junk it would only either skip over the wood or dig into it.
Must be user error somehow. So I took out my real block plane, an
antique from my wife's grandfather, and trimmed the upper trailing
edge. After gluing it I discovered that I could have taken some more
off since there were some little gaps. This is my first time building
up a trailing edge since all the stuff I have built so far had
triangular TE pieces. I learned an awful lot in the few minutes it
took to put this together and will be sure to plane down the wingtip
pieces sufficiently. At least this way I have a slightly thicker TE
right at the root for the rubber band hold downs.
So far so good. After two days, and probably 4 hours total
of work the wing is substantially together. Tomorrow I will have some
pics of the spoiler box doublers and the subspar installation.
Day four:
Ok, so as promised here are some pics of how the subspar
looks on the wing so far. Adding these was really easy, just cut to
size and they plop right into the precut notches
The next part of the build suggests adding the spoiler box
doublers. The directions don't say if they go in one way or another,
and I tend to think they do not. All it took was a little glue and
some clothes pins to get these into place. I did have to remove the
wing from the building board, being careful not to twist it in any
way.
So then the instructions suggest wrapping the joiner boxes
in dacron thread. I have some extra kevlar thread so I decided to use
that. Please excuse the somewhat fuzzy picture again. I wanted to
practice winding this stuff on... it is not easy to get the spacing
even or to ensure that the threads are vertical between the upper and
lower spars. I had it unravel quite a few times, but I blame that on
me not wanting to use CA since I do not yet have a method for
applying it gently (my tips are all clogged up and the stuff tends to
come out rather fast)
Ok, so on to the bottom sheeting. I have always found this
part difficult so really took my time getting set up. I measured
about 6 times, cut once and then dry fit the piece a couple of
times.
Well I really messed up on the sheeting. The glue dried too
fast, I didn't do it in the right order and I had to wick in a ton of
CA to get the sheeting to stick to the ribs.
I asked for a ton of advice on the forums and the
Balsasailplanes Yahoo group and got a whole bunch. From the following
images it doesn't look too bad. Despite some gaps, when viewed from
the bottom you can't even tell there is any extra glue in the
wing.
And for once I got a really nice joint on the leading edge, something
I have always found challenging.
So after following some of the advice and spending some
time looking at how the allegro-lite is done, I went out this evening
and bought 25 pounds of lead shot ($18!) from the local gun store. I
double wrapped it in baggies and probably have 8 pounds in the big
bags and close to 5 lbs in the small bags. That ought to keep the
sheeting in place quite nicely. 
I am tired from work and from watching 'merican Idol with
the family, so no work on the plane tonight. I now have the courage
to attempt the top sheeting with a pretty good feeling that it will
work for me. I plan to thin down the yellow glue to give myself some
extra working time, and then to prebend the balsa sheets ala the
allegro- lite.
Day five: (or therabouts)
Ok, so as I usually do when I get stuck or need motivation
to move past my past errors I procrastinate the next step. So I took
a few days off this week but resumed in earnest this weekend. After
filling my shot bags I put them to use. I ended up using the
technique Bill recommended to sheet the wing - plenty of yellow glue
along the ribs and spar and dribble thin CA along the leading
edge.
So I had rushed a little bit and thought I could squeeze a few very
tiny gaps that were on the leading edge once I got to the dribbling
CA part. It turned out that the leading edge stick had a bow to it
that I had not previously noticed. This is why I had a poor fit on
some of the ribs originally. So I had to shave the LE stick some and
sand the sheet some more and getting a precise fit was not so easy.
It is like fixing a wobbly chair by sawing the long leg... you take
off too much and then have to saw all 3 other legs to stop a new
wobble. This happened to me. All was not lost, however, as I did have
pretty good joints right around the ribs in most cases. I mixed up
some balsa dust and yellow glue as a gap filler, ran a finger full of
it along the LE, let it dry and then sanded it down. All in all it
came out looking quite nice, and I learned a *ton* about dry fitting.
Allegro-Lite here we come! :)
So here is the first 4" piece of sheeting applied to the
upper part of the center of the wing. It looks pretty darn good!
The instructions are very sparse at this point and there is
no direction given where to make the joint for the sheeting that runs
from the spar to the subspar. So I asked around, made some
assumptions and jumped right in. I made a joint right at the 4" mark,
so the actual joint is unsupported except by the ribs every few
centimeters. The other option was to cut the 4" sheet right over the
spar and make the joint there, but it was already glued down and I
did not want to pry it up.
I am quite proud of the radiused corners I made on the
center sheeting. It turned out that the radius on the plans is
*exactly* the radius of a Titebond bottle. So I used that as a
template. 
Unfortunately I made an error at the TE, which I think will
be very minor. There is no radiused corners here although the plans
call for it. I am sure I could retrofit some small pieces if
necessary, but I think it is overkill at this point. I am getting
much better at sanding and fitting and the last 15mm x 170 mm piece
just dropped right in from some earlier 1/16 scrap sheeting that was
cut off the lower sheeting with just a little sanding.
After sanding the upper surfaces look fantastic. From
below, however, you can see how ugly things look with a few glue
drips. Not a big deal, but not perfection either.
So I cannot finish up the center wing section until I buy
some servo extensions. So I put it aside and decided to put the fuse
together. The pieces come out of the lite-ply carriers very nicely.
But the fuse parts that need to come out of the heavier ply take a
wicked beating if you try and flex them out. So I did my best to cut
the ply, but this is tough and *heavy* stuff and each piece needed to
be sanded because there were lots of little nubs once the piece
popped out. I got a little over eager with the sanding and forgot
that even pieces being made out of ply can be fragile. Here is a
busted tail joiner pice. The piece is very thin, so I needed to be
more careful. A little CA will fix this right up.
So doing a dry fit is very important with this planes fuse.
Yes, the pieces are laser cut but they do not go together nicely at
all. I needed to sand every plywood piece so that it would fit inside
whatever keyhole it mated with. I read on the Scepter thread that
Christian had the same problem, so fortunately I was prepared to do
the sanding. Still, it is a pain and is sometimes difficult to hold
these smaller pieces against the sandpaper without also taking off
some skin. Fortunately my skin is pretty covered with CA, so really
all I am doing is sanding CA. :)
The first step is to join the two fuselage sides. They are
keyed and labeled left and right. This was a no brainer step. I did
choose to use yellow glue even though the instructions call for
epoxy. I just do not see that the fuse needs any extra weight or the
marginal strength of epoxy for most of these well supported joints.
Heaven knows that this fuse is very sturdy with all the plywood, and
my research on various woodworking sites suggests that a good yellow
glue joint is equally as strong as a good epoxy joint, especially
when there is no gap filling required. All the joints on the fuse are
extremely tight and I'd bet the ply would break before the joints
do.
The fuse doublers are another easy install. You
just spread some glue on one side of the doubler, double and triple
checking *beforehand* that you are clamping the correct side of the
fuse. It is easy to get messed up here and glue the piece to the same
side of both sides. The trick I used was to ensure that the lettering
denoting right and left, found at the back of the fuse, is face down.
Each fuse side should be the opposite of the other. I used clothes
pins to keep the doublers in place. I missed the part in the
instructions where it said to use former 5 as a guide when putting
the doublers in place, but just by lining them up with the upper fuse
edge I got it right on anyway. I checked the spacing/alignment
afterward and I was fine.
So I put the servo tray together. This required a bit of
sanding to make sure my HS-81 servos will fit in snugly, and again I
had to do quite a bit of sanding to get the pieces to fit together.
Once together, though, this thing is strong!
Day whatever:
So after waiting for the servo tray to dry I dry fit
everything on the fuse and then clamped it together. The instructions
warn about making sure the fuse goes together square, but I couldn't
figure out how to get the pieces to squeeze together and remain
square at the same time. So I relied upon the tabbed plywood to keep
everything mostly aligned and took my chances. The plywood is
relatively stiff but the shape of the fuse tapers toward the front
and rear from the sides and on the bottom from the midpoint of the
fuse to the nose. It was not easy getting everything squeezed in all
together. Near a few of the tabs I did not get the best joints due to
the fuse trying to spread itself apart. Oh well, nothing a little
fillet of glue can't fix! ;-)
So after taking the clamps off things looked pretty well
aligned. I added in the pushrods making sure they cross over per the
plans. I did have to do some filing of the holes to get the outer
pushrod casings through but otherwise that part was easy.
I did depart from the plans in one area. The plans called
for simple cross grain sheeting. I decided to do opposing 45 degree
grain on the fuselage. According to what I have read, and build work
I have done previously this adds some rigidity and breaking strength
to the rear of the fuse. It doesn't add too much time and reduces the
number (if not the length of) of wood joints. Unfortunately I did not
take heed of the advice in the instructions and everything I know
about building and I initially built a twist into the fuselage after
weighting it overnight. Fortunately I was able to build the twist out
when sheeting the bottom of the fuse. All is straight now! Another
lesson learned - be patient, check the squareness of the fuse many
times before leaving the weights on.
I did have some difficulty came in opening up the holes for
the rubber band dowel. The plywood holes (3mm birch ply x 2 formers)
was way too tight for the dowel. So I had to spend quite a bit of
time sanding the dowel, test fitting, and filing the holes. You can
see it here installed in the picture below. I didn't want to be
hassling with the towhook assembly under the dowel later on so I
installed it at this point. It adds some difficulty because the fuse
no longer sits flat. I can deal.
So at this point I am fitting the canopy. It is
white out of the box. I think I will paint it black or some color.
Probably just plain paint rather than tinting it. It depends how
motivated I get when I get around to covering the plane. The
instructions say to test fit the canopy without really explaining how
it should fit. I probably cut a little too much off despite the
warnings to take it slow. It still looks pretty good:
The noseblock is 6 laser cut balsa pieces laminated onto a ply
former. It was easy to do this. Shaping the noseblock comes after
finalizing installation of the canopy. Here I am also clamping the
canopy tray system - simply a small piece of ply that hooks under the
noseblock. Quite honestly I am really impressed with the canopy
arrangement here!
Day whatever:
So as I mentioned, one of the pieces for the tail was too
short.
I did some gluing, perhaps making an error here and
crossing the grain on my makeshift center piece. But I figure the
tail is pretty well supported along both glue joints by the fuse and
I should be OK.
Putting the fin and rudder together were very easy. It look
me a couple of hours, with a few hours in between to let the glue dry
and take my son to basketball practice.
So here is the left tip construction well underway. I tried
the "assemble all at once" method of shear web attachment and it
seemed to work fine. Except now I have a lot of sanding to do in the
upper spar slots. I need to be careful to be sure I do not oversand
the shear webs and sand into the slots in the ribs. I am going to go
back to the recommended way on the right wingtip - glue all the ribs
in and then sand each shear web to fit.
Well, here we are about to put the upper spar into the wing
and the wood doesn't fit. Only after I compared my two strips of
basswood did I discover that they were different thicknesses. After
searching for a few minutes I figured out where the strip went...
into the fin/rudder as the support for the rudder post. Dangit! The
LHS didn't have the basswood, so I will have to try the other shop
down the road. If worse comes to worst I will monkey something
together with the wood I have/can get, after all it is in the wingtip
and is a relatively low stress area.
Day whatever (April 2nd):
So it has been awhile since I have posted some pictures.
After my error in cutting the spar material it has taken me a while
to get back to the LHS, and I still have not. We were supposed to
receive 3 - 4 inches of rain this weekend in Connecticut so I decided
this was a good weekend for building. I finally finished up the left
tip.
On Friday night I added the sheeting and did a much better
job this time around. On Saturday morning I decided to use CA to
affix the rib cap strips and I am glad I did. It made the work go so
much more quickly. I made sure a fan was blowing and the basement
doors were open since I usually get naseau whenever I get a snootful.
As I was moving the piece around I noticed how much the ribs were
flexing. I figured it out - I had not glued the tip blocks into
place. That and the cap strips increase the parallelogram ridigity of
the wing tremendously.
I am always so pleased when my tip blocks come out nicely.
It is so satisfying to take a razor plane and remove a few hundred
paper thin curls of balsa wood. I almost feel like a sculptor, or
perhaps even a real woodworker like some of our great-grandfathers
might have been. I managed to keep a nice airfoil shape and yet took
off enough wood that there was no excess (keep the tips as light as
possible).
One of the toughest jobs of building a new plane is always
the covering. I am finding that practice makes perfect and that there
are *no* books on the subject that can teach you the little hints
that are necessary for a good job. For example, I have never read
approximately what angle you should hold a razor blade in order to
closely trim overhanging covering. And yet this is the first time
that I have discovered just the right way to cut the covering while
leaving a virtually seamless look (in places, don't get me wrong I am
still not even close to perfect). And yet like so many other authors
I do not think there is a way to put into words how to position the
razor blade, where to hold your fingers and also how to hold the
piece to ensure just enough 64th's get cut off. The three things I do
know... covering cuts best with a brand new single sided razor blade,
covering dulls razor blades after only a few cuts (save them for
cutting balsa, however!), and Fiskar's scissors run up the trailing
edge of a wing make nice straight seams (that is a Faye Stilley
technique). 
So I had been reading all about Blenderm from 3M. I could not find
any in any of the local pharmacies, so I ended up trying a brand from
Walmart called something like NextTape. The stuff I used is very
flexible and stretchy, and also very stickly. I applied it to the
front and back side of the hinge just as if I was doing a standard
covering hinge. It worked extremely well and moves back and forth
very smoothly.
So in the middle of the day I decided to paint my fuse with
spraypaint. This is a first for me as usually I just use covering. So
I took a can of paint off the shelf and started spraying. Well I ran
out 1/2 way through. I grabbed another can, this time black and said
"what the heck". I really should have waited until I got to go to the
store as now I am going to have to spend some quality time with my
power sander getting the black off. Talk about an ugly fuse! At the
point I did the spraying I had not shaped the nose or added the
canopy. Now those pieces are done and I must say, like the tips that
I was very satisfied with the shape of the nose. Way more satisified
with this shape than what I created on my Marauder last year. It
looks really sleek and aerodynamic.
Next up, possibly tomorrow, covering the rest of the tail
and sanding the fuse. I have not decided whether to hook up the
spoilers as I do not currently have the servos to get it done nor the
servo extensions. It'd be foolish, I know, to finish the wing without
the spoilers installed but right now I am feeling under some pressure
to get this thing finished in time for the beginning of flying season
(and to keep my part of the bargain with Brian of Laser Arts).
Other unused images:
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T hanks for reading this far! If you have any questions about my flying experiences please look send me a private message as "fprintf" on rcgroups.com or send me an email to fprintf at fprintf.rchomepage.com. You can also leave me messages on the bulletin board.
G o back home.