Fuselage Construction-49 Inches

Few photos during fuselage construction. All parts are made of 3mm plywood, except the stabilizers are laminated with 3mm balsawood













29 January 2006

L4 Piper Cub Fuselage Dimension

Length from firewall to rudder base 43 inches
Width at firewall 5.5 inches
Width at the cockpit 6.0inches


I have five days Chinese New Year Holiday. It was really a good time to start building my Giant Scale L4 Piper Cub.

Materials
My original idea was to built L4 fuselage from a foam. But after looking around in my storeroom I didn't have any foam supply left. Again cost cutting play the role here. I need to buy new foam. No..no.., then I saw 3mm playwood sitting around, a left over of my abandoned quarter scale J3 Piper Cub. Then I thought why not I tried to built the L4 fuselage from the 3mm plywood.

Weight Problem
3mm plywood is heavy compare to balsa sheet. Well I have no choice but to cut a lot of hole in order to lightening the L4 fuse.

Tools
Normal hobby knife with a lot of "hand's power". It really made my thumb and point fingers numb. Well, at least it was good exercises for my hand.

Glue
Combination of Dunlop Contact Adhesive and a little bit of 5 minute epoxy. The secret of using Contact Adhesive(CA) is to apply on both surfaces, wait until it dries (abount 5 to 10 minutes) and joint it together. Never,never apply too much CA, or it may result in weak bonding.


Covering

At the moment I am thinking of covering the L4 Piper Cub with regular white cotton fabric and then to apply automotive paint. I had made an experiment yesterday evening to test wheather nitro fuel will affect the autopaint. It seems that autopaint did not get affected by nitro. I think I will go ahead with the techniques.