Crash90

My Feedback: (17)

I just can't seem to get it right. LOL. I have the fuse sides assembled. The formers are installed, the phenolic is installed the firewall and the bottom sheeting. I just noticed that the fuse has a slight warp in it. Nothing severe maybe 3/16 of an inch. It is not twisted just warped. I guess my questions are. 1 Should I be concerned and 2 How would you recommend I go about fixing it? Thanks.

AFSalmon

My Feedback: (3)

It is hard to answer without knowing exactly where the problem lies. The most important thing is to have the wings, engine, and tail aligned properly and square. If the fuse is slightly twisted then you should be able to file the stab opening prior to gluing it in so that it is parallel to your wing. This is very important. Same with your stab and rudder. A slight adjustment prior to gluing these in place on the rear should allow you to get them 90 degrees to the stab. I hope this helps and if you have pictures showing details we are all here to help.

Crash90

My Feedback: (17)

I will try to post a pic tonight. There really isn't any twist to the fuse. It's more of a bow in the middle. Kind of like a bananna just not that severe.

Crash90

My Feedback: (17)

This is the best I could do. Although the pic makes it look twisted, the fuse sides are 90 degrees to the building board all the way from the front to the back. You can see the slight bow in the fuse, I aligned a straight edge with the outside of the sheeting at the tail and at the firewall and you can see how the fuse runs out about 3/16. Is this a problem that you feel needs addressing? OH. For anyone that is interested. The header drop for the DA50 is 25mm.

Spacey

Doesn't look too bad if you ask me. Only way to really fix I would imagine would be to remove the sheeting completely and re-do. If it was me? I'll finish it up as is and enjoy flying it!

Cheers,
Rudolf

AFSalmon

My Feedback: (3)

Actually, you do not need to remove any sheeting. Looks to me like you have not put on the bottom sheeting or the top turtle deck so therefore adjustments are easy. Simply cut or break loose the rear glue joints at teh fin post and then the whole assembly can be adjusted forward and aft. The twist you have os do to the rear of the fuse not being glued together properly. A good technige many use on giant scales like Cardens and such is to pin or clamp too long straight edges or blocks on your building board to form a jig to hold the fuse in alignment as you glue the back and bottom together. I highly recommend this. Also, you can use the plans to jig the the fuse on your board and then put weights on top to hold it firmly flat against your board making sure the sides are 90 degrees to the board. You can even use a couple of carpenter squares to aid in this. Then piece by piece sheet the bottom as instructed in the manual. Keep the weights on and move them around as you progress to make sure everything stays square and straight. Hope this all helps!

Crash90

My Feedback: (17)

Thanks guys. Actually I do have the bottom sheeting on. I just ordered the header from DA and they estimate 7 days which gives me plenty of time to correct the problem. Thanks.

Spacey

Yes if the bottom sheeting weren't on it it would have probably been a sinch to correct the problem but I thought I noticed the first post mentioning something about the sheeting, hard to tell from the pictures. It's also hard for me to tell from the pictures how hard it would be to remove said sheeting, I got 10bucks saying though the sheeting is the cause of your problem. It's so vital to keep the fuselage sides perfect while sheeting these things and of course it is also equally vital to not use any thing which could deform the fuse in any way while gluing on the sheeting (Like wetted wood or something silly like that). Like Mike says though if you can remove the sheeting splitting the tail sounds easy to re-align things so if you're up for it and have 7 days I say go ahead and fix it quickly.

Only real headache is going to be cutting off the bottom sheeting but I've done it before and if you take your time and a really sharp knife, have a sanding block handy for afterwards, you'll be fine. If you used CA you're going to run into the headache of the little hardened CA wood layer right around the contact points so plan ahead from the start so you can avoid cutting this, it's going to be impossible. I would in your case rather try to remove the sheeting by cuttting right above this hardened little layer and then lightly sanding this afterwards should be the quickest route. If half of the hardened wooden layer stays on the plane then so be it, it's not going to weaken the model any in my opinion and gluing the new/recycled old sheeting back on onto this won't do harm from my experience.

Essentially if you take your time cutting it loose and don't mess anything up with a knife slipping after trying to go through the glue joint all in all this fix shouldn't take longer than 20 minutes really.

Good luck with it! I wish I could have a Hybrid on the building board right now, heck any big bird truthfully.

Crash90

My Feedback: (17)

I positioned the fuse on the plans and realized that the bottom of the fuse was straight. Turns out that it was a small twist. I clamped a straight piece of steel to the side to straighten it out, then I installed the rear turtledeck. When I removed the straight edge is stayed pretty close to perfect. I should have trwisted it just a bit in the opposite direction but it has to be within 3/32 which is good.

My only guess is that when shrrting the bottom of the fuse I used a brick to hold the fuse down flat on the board. Maybe it was too much weight and it caused the back of the fuse to lean a bit. Oh well. like I said it is fixed now. Thanks for the help guys.

AFSalmon

My Feedback: (3)

Sounds like you are close enough for #d work then. Finish building this bird and it will fly fine.