I have a plane! The joining of the wing to the fuselage is always a milestone during model airplane construction as it is at this point that you can now consider the model to be a plane! After almost 2 months and over 70 man-hours of building effort, I have finally reached the point where I have a plane.
Since my last build report, I have applied a traditional silkspan and dope covering to the wing. As seen in the below photos, the wing now has 3 coats of clear dope applied over the silkspan and it is ready for the color coat. All the major components are now assembled together including the tail feathers, wing, and the air scoop under the wing.
Now that the components are together, I have some sanding and touchup work to do then I will cover all the sheeted tail surfaces and the fuselage with silkspan as a means of covering the balsa grain. That will be followed by a few coats of clear dope then the entire plane will be ready for the color coat.
I have decided to go with an aluminum and light (lime) green color scheme. The exact pattern is still to be decided but basically, the wings, stab and elevator will be aluminum. The fuselage, fin and rudder will be green. I am still open to wild and crazy (or even modestly boring) patterns using these 2 colors so feel free to post your suggestions.
As I said above, I am now 70 man-hours into this build. As I expected, and mentioned in an earlier Build Report, there has been a lot of cleanup and modification work needed to all the pre-cut parts that came with this kit. That has resulted in a lot of extra time being spent getting pieces to line up and fit correctly. Plus, I have come to believe that I am just a slow, fussy builder and that has added time to the build. Fortunately, there is still plenty of snow on the ground here in the Syracuse, NY area so spending time in the basement building planes is still a viable activity!
Here are two photos of the plane assembly as it currently stands:
(Click on the photos to get a larger image with higher resolution)
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