Rapide Diary - March 2008

Rapide Diary - March 2008

As I said in the main part of the diary, it seemed to take forever for the wings to come together. As well as the taper on the wing (meaning that all ribs are different), the subsidiary spars took a lot of sorting out and the arrangement is different for the upper and lower wings. The spars themselves had to be joined and there are a lot of dihedral braces to cut out. Add to this the fact that I had decided to go for ailerons on both wings and you can begin to see how the work adds up. Anyway, eventually, I had amassed a collection of wing panels.

		Having joined the three inner panels of the lower wing and sorted out the mounting of the wing to the fuselage, the next challenge was the nacelles. This picture shows a dry fit of the basic framework to the spar (the wing is inverted). As you can see, one side frame fits against a rib, but the other doesn't. This section of the wing, as well as being tapered, also has anhedral, so there is a distinct shortage of reference lines to get everything straight!
The picture on the right shows the first of many jigging sessions to try to align the nacelle framework. Because the leading edge section of this part of the wing is to be sheeted, I opted for a false leading edge into which I spliced a hardwood section. Diagonal struts were then added to the nacelle side frames to attach them to the leading edge. Suddenly, it all started to look a lot more plausible. This picture also shows the torsion rod undercarriage arrangement.
		On the pretext of checking whether the model sat level on its wheels, I put it all together for a few pictures. The outer wing panels of the lower wing are still just clipped on at this stage because there is a lot of work still to do on the centre section and it is so much easier to handle without the tip panels on. As you can see from the picture, the upper aileron linkages are all sorted and the lower aileron servo is installed. The aileron snakes can't of course be fitted until the wing is joined.However it was encouraging to see rudder, elevator and one pair of ailerons moving - always a landmark for me in a major building project.
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