Scale Wendell Hostetler 30% Piper Cherokee Glass Fuselage Build.

[TonyHallo]

So I have the Champ ready to paint and a friend from out of town is staying with us for the next few days, I don't want to do the paint work while she is here. Let's start another build then. I decided to start a new build and this will be focused on building the glass fuselage.
Appowner and I have had conversation back and forth on the original build about the plans and a few differences from the full scale. I had the three views printed and studied those along with photos taken from various sources on the web. I have to decided to modify the design using the three views and photos.

 

[TonyHallo]

The photo below shows F5 and the rear most portion of the fuselage structure. You can see the difference of the original and what I plan to use. I plan to make the back half of the fuselage out of sheeted foam starting a F5 to the tail, all the lines represent how the hot wire will progress. This will be glued to front half of the balsa structure built from the plans.

 

[pawnshopmike]

 

[TonyHallo]

I plan to use the first canopy that I pulled for the original Cherokee, this was too heavy to use and it will work just great here. I have the first side pulled off and started building the second side

 

[Stevendavis]

Nice!

 

[TonyHallo]

Thanks Steven.
I have the front half of the fuselage roughed in. This one is better than the first build because I learned from the first build. On the first build I glued the 1/16" aircraft plywood doublers onto the 1/4" stick frame before assembling the fuselage sides, I had one heck of time get the bend correct at F2. I used very heavy 3/32" sheeting for the doubler here and only glued it at one vertical line on the stick frame, I made bulkheads near the former locations held the sides in position, when ready I put the glue on the sides then pushed the side into position with squares. It worked very well. The canopy is being glued on with Gorilla Glue, once cured the joint will be filled with Superfil.
Next will be a trip to Lowes to get a 2" thick sheet of foam for the back half after the Champ fuselage is repainted.

 

[TonyHallo]

One area that I didn't care for on the original 30% Cherokee was the fit between the cowl and the fuselage, after it was done and painted the edge of the cowl stuck out a little as seen in the photo. I'm taking some time to fit the cowl to the fuselage and plan to have a step so that the fuselage and cowl are in the same plane. I have already slit the bottom so that the cowl slides on farther and now working on the sides.

 

[dhal22]

Tight!!!

 

[TonyHallo]

Using Compufoil and a photo provided by Appowner to create the template for the rear former.
Also created a plot for the wing root in Compufoil. On the previous build the wing was built straight and then stub ribs were added to the outside of the straight wing platform to form the extended wing root as shown below. Still mulling ideas for cutting foam ribs with the extended root.

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[dhal22]

Over my head.