High Quality Plan Sets for Radio Control Aircraft
Henry Struck's 1937 Benny Boxcar
Scaled to 108 inch span
Page 3
A template is provided for laminating the vertical fin and rudder outer frames.
I finally found a use for Golden Rod. It certainly was no good for it's intended pupose but worked great to compress the laminations while the Titebond glue
dried. There is a slight arc to the balsa blocks where they rest against the inside of the laminations and the ends of the Golden Rod are under tension.
The assembled vertical fin and rudder. Note the the 1/16 balsa shims spacing out the rudder from the fin during construction.
It works well to frame up the two fuselage sides as shown, with the sides parallel all the way back. The first step is to install the firewall bulkhead which is laminated from two sheets of 1/8 ply.
The common length crossmembers 1 thru 4 are then installed, checkling that the sides are aligned exactly all the way to the tail.
After the previous step is complete, install the rear dowel support gussets and align the fuselage over the plan in the upright position. Note the pins with hold downs in the front ends of the longeron. There is a balsa
shim under the third bottom crossmember that supports the fuselage in a level attitude which can be checked at the firewall which should be vertical. The fuselage is pinned to the shim to prevent movement there.
If It had been possible to choose the optimum wood cross section for the longerons they would be 5/16 square, so having pin holes in the 3/8 stock is not an issue.
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