Thinking about the Aeromaster gives me an appreciation for your desire to build in a scale that fits in your car fully assembled. The Aeromaster fit inside my Honda Accord (seen at the left side of the pic) with a little room to spare.

Yes E.J. , especially with Bipes I can get a decent size plane, relatively speaking, to fit without any disassembly. That saves time at the field, makes it convenient to store hanging like a bat from the prop in the garage, and eliminates the possibility of things like wiring the ailerons backwards.

Plus, what I seem to notice, maybe because I want it to be so, is that the smaller the plane the closer in you can fly it, and so my planes looks just about as big to me as some of the Giant scale planes that are flying twice as big (or more) a pattern. Anyway, its my "perspective". The Aeromaster is a very convenient size but the Waco will fit wings on too in the back of my old Volvo "airplane car".

One of the coolest "airplane cars" I've seen was back in the '70s. An older gent had a Morris Woodie wagon. An airplane car with a lot of character.

EJWash

My LHS had some pretty nice 6" wide 1/8" balsa, so I built a new vert stab. This time I extended the tail post an inch beyond the bottom of the fuselage. I'll trim it to length when I mount the stab. Took a few hours to build, mostly eating for glue to dry.

I also got a chance to square-up and use a couple of the taller building board fixtures and presses.

EJWash

A nice thing about building our own models, is that "do overs" are possible. If we build something that we don't like, we can try again, and again, until we are satisfied.

True Tom. One of the reasons I'm gravitating towards plans building. A longer process, but you're your own quality control department.

EJWash

I think you made a wise choice build a new V stab. Yes a little more work but you will be happy in the end knowing it is as strong as it can be.

Put down the fuselage crutch on the building board.

Just like building the wings started with the main spars and everything being attached from there, so it is with the fuselage. A balsa frame (called a "crutch") that follows the outside shape (birds-eye view - looking straight down) of the fuselage is built over the plans. The bottom fuselage formers are attached to crutch. The fuselage is then turned over and the top formers attached.

Thought I'd post a few picks of the new toy I found at MicroMark. The fuselage crutch framework has cross-pieces attached. Being that the sides of the fuselage are curved, the ends of these cross-pieces are angled. With the use of my new measuring tool I am able to determine the exact angle of the cross-pieces. I can then sand each piece to this angle with my mitre sander.

EJWash

That is a very cool sanding tool and perfect for this type of construction. I have always been frustrated trying to get a perfect angled joint. Fantastic work as usual.

Thanks U2.

At a base of just 5-1/4" X 7-1/2", the angle sander is too small. I want to make an enlarged version of it.

EJWash

The fuselage crutch (so aptly named) is finished and is ready to receive the fuselage components.

The magnetic building board system shows a real advantage here. Very small chance at building a banana

EJWash

Forgot to taper the outside front (nose) area of the crutch before I took the pic. NOW the crutch is complete and ready to receive the fuselage components.

You've seen me replace several of the kit supplied parts. In most cases, I'm not satisfied with the die-cutting (die-smashing) of a part, or the quality of the kit-supplied wood. In order to duplicate the parts that I replace, I make a photocopy of the part I'm replacing from the plan sheet. I compare the photocopy to the plan sheet to make sure the copy matches the replacement part on the plan (some copiers do not provide an exact 1-to-1 copy).

I used to own a copier that would accept card-stock weight paper (80#) but my current copier does not. Card-stock makes a great trace-around template. What I do now is glue the photocopy of the part to card-stock using photo mounting spray glue. This grade of glue sprays finer from the can than the multi-purpose spray glues. I roll-out the photocopy on the card-stock using a veneer roller to get it nice and flat. I give the glue about 10-15 minutes to dry and then trim the outline of the part. Now I have a template of the part I want to replace. I use a fine-tip roller-ball type ink pen to draw my outline on the wood. This type of pen does not indent the wood, and the fine-tip allows the ink to get right up close to the template.

EJWash

Nice progress, EJ.

I enjoyed building the fuselage on mine. I'm sure that you will, too.

IIRC, there are sizing controls within the flatbed scanner and/or printer with which we might fine tune output size. Already having 2 sets of plans for the Cub, I haven't yet tried duplicating sections of the plans but now I'll look for an excuse to do that.

I have a photo printer (Canon ip8500) whose paper transport handles heavy photo paper very well so should do just fine on a manila folder (my go to for small patterns), though I have to test that.

Ordinarily, when I have to replace a kit part, I just use the part as a template for the new one.

Others have mentioned transferring an image from the copy directly to the wood by heating the reversed image's toner using a covering iron. Got to try that one, too.

Originally Posted by loNslo

Ordinarily, when I have to replace a kit part, I just use the part as a template for the new one.

In my case, I'd end-up with a duplicate of a badly "cut" die-cut part.

Originally Posted by loNslo

Others have mentioned transferring an image from the copy directly to the wood by heating the reversed image's toner using a covering iron. Got to try that one, too.

I tried that out a couple of years ago using a clothes iron. It does work fine.

EJWash

Thanks Tom!

EJWash