Quarter Scale De Havilland Vampire
Page 5
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The last page we were looking at the wings and so below we shall continue
to chart their progress.

Now having gotten towards sheeting the wings I have found that
the area of sheeting covering the wheel well (the area with the carbon
cloth on the upper surface that you can see below) is largely unsupported.
It will be glassed as well but this is an area just waiting to have a finger
or aircraft stand poked through so I have to find a light solution

I have decided to make a foam undercarriage bay liner which will
serve two purposes. One being to support the lower wing skin covering
the U/C bay and the second is that it will give me a very nice surface
for the ply wheel well liner to be adhere to.

I begin above by cutting the blocks so that they fit nicely within the well

I then make two ply templates that are representative of the desired
finished shape of the wheel well. One template is clamped each side of
the foam blank (don't forget to lightly wax the edges of your templates
to ease the slippage of the nicrome wire cutter)

Next above the hot wire bow is run around the edge of the blank

Leaving if you are lucky exactly what you want and a nice part
ready to be given a quick sand and tidy up

Next they are glued and clamped in place

The wing panels still in a very rough state are trial fitted to the fus
as a gross error check

A size comparison with the little Amelia

As you can see I have now jumped ahead a bit and am installing the
inboard wing panels onto the fus. These are unable to be removed one
attached. It is imperative that now the serious measurement starts and
that it is right, the result of it not being straight is that it will not fly.

The spirit level is so that I can set things up coarsely before I break
out the steel rules and incidence meter



Everything on this model, thrust line, main plane incidence, horizontal
stab incidence and thrust line are all at zero degrees relative to the
datum (which is also zero degrees). To help with this I made a proper
stand wire cut to the fus profile

 

 

 

 

 

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