Hooray for the shortest day of the year!
The first task was to lay out and cut the notches for the fuselage longerons in the fuselage frame. I made a master template for this that can be used with all the other frames.
The #4 frame is the largest of the frames. It forms the "roll-bar" of the cockpit, and supports the canopy latch. It is fastened with glue to the front face of the main wing spar. It is an important glue joint, as it provides a lot of strength in mating the fuselage to the wing. It needs to be positioned with accuracy. For this job, I removed the spar from the jig. Three holes will need to be drilled through this assembly for the gear retraction gearbox.
The Christmas lights are not permanent, only seasonal!
In preparation for attaching frame #4, the wing spar needed to be trimmed to close to its final dimensions. These were determined from templates I made from plywood for transferring the rib chord lines to the spar. The trim lines could then be placed by measurement from the chord line (a chord line is a bit like a center line, but its not in the center of anything, more like a free spirit). The gap between the try-square and the wood shows the taper that the top surface of the wing will have. When you multiply this cross section by a 27' wing spar, it amounts to about 2 gallons of wood shavings. For this task, I purchased an electric hand-held planer, which made the task easy. The angel is taking a good look at my work, so as to report to my guardian.
Happy Holidays everyone!
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