I selected Esaki tissue from Peck Polymers; picked blue and orange that best fit the end result I wanted to achieve: colors that are close to the actual plane and a covering material that will highlight the model's structure. These are the horizontal stabilizer and elevator fins covered in orange tissue with two coats of sealer: After practicing on the stabilizers, elevator, and rudder I turned my attention to the fuselage. The complex contours posed a challenge that I wanted to tackle first and here are some results. The windows are covered and cut away after applying a coat of sealer to the covering, leaving the cross members covered: A view of the internal setup and a top view of the battery hatch: The battery hatch is located at the bottom of the fuselage behind F3. The hatch is secured with a simple swiveling latch and a silk strap:
Now that I have the two matching fuselage sides I started to plan the structure. I've never built such a structure before the part that seemed difficult was creating the sharp breaks in the longerons. I started with preparing the two main formers, F2 and F3. Instead of 1/8" ply I used 1/16" and reinforced the top and bottom with a 3/32" hard balsa strip: For the initial structure setup I followed the build article and carefully cut the longerons behind F3 and in front of F2. Then lined up the sides, top-down, on the plans and glued the former: Once the glue cured I pulled in the back of the fuselage and then the front over F1, which I cut from 1/16" ply and hollowed to allow room for the battery. I took the precaution of wetting the doublers before attempting to bend the fuselage sides, this allowed the longerons to have a sharp bend while maintaining flexibility of the 1/16" doubler sheet: I filled in the notches in the longerons by gluing in thin balsa
The fuselage cabin area is rather cavernous and installing modern radio electronics does not pose any difficulties. Care should be taken to position the components in a way that allows easy access and also aide in balancing. This picture shows the elevator and rudder servos with the receiver and antenna positions: The heavier components such as ESC and battery are positioned as forward as possible under the turtle deck through the hollowed F1 and up against the firewall:
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