When the plans for the Aquila were first drawn all of the radio equipment was very large by today’s standards. The inside of the glass fuselage reminded me of the lunch box I used to take to school with so much room inside. It took me a while to settle on the final version of the equipment installation. A few areas concerned me with a fuselage that was made 30 years ago. One was the wide open structure would crack in the area by the rear canopy opening after several hard landings. Another was how to make the ballast go in and out quickly. Originally the Aquila wood fuselage had a small ballast box near the leading edge. The Grande had a similar provision on the glass fuselage. That design idea just seemed to limit my choices for the servo installation and receiver mounting. All of the current fuselages I have for modern designs use a plywood stiffener in the canopy area to mount servos and ballast. This looked like a promising compromise for my Aquila. I needed a robust reinforcement in the front and a way to easily install ballast. In the pictures you can see the servos are mounted on the .125 inch plywood using servo frames from Soaring USA. I created a 12.5 ounce ballast bar from sheet lead secured to the plywood with an 8-32 pan head screw. I’ll have to make the final receiver and wire placement in the next building session. The tow hook is a more up to date version that we use on all of the expensive molded sailplanes. I wanted to have a little more adjustment and strength than the original Airtronics adjustable tow hook. I was a little disappointed with the final canopy fit. My canopy frame was spot on when it sat on the fuselage. The allowance for the plastic thickness was incorporated but upon the actual test fit of the canopy it was obvious that shape was not a perfect fit to the glass fuselage. It would be interesting to know if the canopy plug was different between the buildup fuselage and the glass fuselage. If you know send me a note!