3D Fish Build

7. All covered

Transparent Profilm was used, the colours are what I had in my bits box.

6. Fuselage tweaks

Under carriage leg, Carbon rod and piano wire shaft held in place with cyano and heat shrink. The middle pic shows the internal fus looking towards the front and here you can see one of my mistakes and a mod. The servos had no backing pieces to screw into only 3mm balsa, so using some scrap from the laser cut parts I glued some Ply doublers in place. B shows the Under carriage fitting, I added the balsa to bring it to the level on the underside of the fus to make covering easier. And C shows my first mounting hole for the under carriage leg, through the centre of the top ply, but it pushed the leg to an angle that just annoyed me, so I moved the leg, and the hole will now be my aerial outlet.

The right hand image is the finished model waiting for final light sand and covering. In all (minus the gluing time as I like to use white glue where I can), it took about 4 hours work to get to this stage, I'd call that quick.

5. Wing

Ailerons with horn doublers, I think I would like to have seen some anti warp strips in these longer pieces, but we'll see.

4. Wing

The parts marked A have to be fitted into the 2 ply (inner) ribs befor assembly, I didnt, and it was only the fact that I'd not glued the ribs to the spar that saved be as I was able to wiggle them in. Parts B are in 2 halves and fitted ok.

What you get

A full sized plan and some of the best laser cut wood I've seen. I pressed out all the wood parts (to tell the truth it would have been harder to keep them in) and gave a wipe with my sanding block and that was it, ready to build.

3. Wing

The wing was more straight forward, pin down the TE, slide the ribs onto the carbon tube, I glued the ribs to the TE but only the last 2 ribs on the spar, and that was my first mistake. The 2 photos show a problem I had with the LE. It looks like it was designed to be fitted before the end rib was glued. My solution was to cut the LE fit it and gue the bit back afterwards. Seems OK now.

2. Fuselage

The top ply spine was glued in with PU (Gorilla) glue, but I think I used a bit too much, just look at the foaming.

1. Fuselage

Not sure where to starts and having no absolute datum to work from, I made the motor mount, glued on fuselage side to it, once dry I glued the other fus side, again waited to dry and added the internal formers, and top ply spine.

Finished model curtosy of www.pteroworks.com

Not a straight line in sight.