sir crashallot

if your worried about the straightness of the fus, an easy way of lining up is draw a straight line on the workbench and also mark out the center of every former, align the formers over the straight line and when all the center makrs on the former sit on that straigth line then it is safe to glue the sides. if you end up with a fuselage like a bannana it can be very hard to fly good to actualy see some progress thought this thread was going to end up like allot of other threads do rigth at the back never finished

rabraaten

I'll assume from your name that you're a bit of an expert on this thread... Makes me feel good to get advice that I've already thought of. The back side of my 'plans' has a line straight down it from the other night. The tail end of the fuse conveniently has a hole through the bottom for one of the empenage screws which made lining up the aft easier than I expected. I got brave tonight and lined everything up, braced and glued. I'll have some pictures of the progress through the weekend I'm sure. Finally feels like I'm getting some repairs done now at least. I also epoxied the servo tray back into the wing on my other Arrow after the wreck I had last summer. Its nearly complete and I'll have some new pictures on that thread too...Later folks.

sir crashallot

im no expert the name is just a name. but yeah when i used to go flying a few years back people would just hand me planes when they had crashed and told me to do what i can with it or have a good bomfire with it, many a time i ended up with some nice planes that just needed some work, looking good though will check later for pictures

rabraaten

OK...Photo update time...The front and rear fuse 'halves' joined. I'm a bit worried about the joint between the old and the new. There is overlap of a couple inches. In the rear I doubled up the ply with the 'T' that you can see, but if you look closely you'll see that the dividing line in front of the former over the trailing edge is only a balsa union. The ply from the front butts up against the ply in the rear. Would I be okay epoxying a small piece of ply over this joint to firm it up you think?

All that's left is to fit and epoxy the firewall in, epoxy in the landing gear block, top and bottom of the front fuse, form up the turtle deck and modify and attach the tail feathers. It doesn't seem near as daunting now that the fuse kinda looks like a fuse. Actually have anough parts to mock up and look like a real airplane again. I'll do something so that the trailing edge flows better into the rear of the fuse but wing attachment looks like it will go pretty straight forward.....Wooohoooooo!!!!!

rabraaten

More pics

rabraaten

And a preliminary look at the redesigned tail feathers/empenage....the new bum.....

sir crashallot

now things are starting to shape up. the joining you speak about reinforce behind with epoxy and maybee a small bandage or alittle bit of cloth. yes it will add weight behind the cg but heck its better to be safe than sorry. on the outer side of the halfs if theres a small gap work some epoxy into the joint it will help bit it maybee alittle hard to sand when dry but strength is everything as you dont want it snappin the rear off everytime you land.but its coming on keep it up

StingRayZ09

Looking good rabraaten There's nothing like rebuilding and flying, Keep up the good work. wait intill you see my next repair job..

rabraaten

Boy StingRay, thats never something you want to hear in this hobby...LOL... Here's a quick update. I did a bit more work on the fuselage. It seems that as I get it more assembled the plans change. I don't think I'll be able to use the tank hold down and electronics cover that I had planned as space looks a little tight under the wing. I'll likely hold the receiver and battery, packed in foam with the attachment of the wing. The tank will probably be held in in similar fashion. The servo tray is in, the hole in it and the former at the back of the cockpit allow the servo wires to come through into the receiver compartment. I'm not sure how the turtle deck is going to shape up, I set all of the formers so that the middle one is lined up and straight from front to back but the ones going up the sides are a bit off....minor mods as I install I think. I also got the rudder completely glued, filled and sanded, ready for covering.