Alright, things are coming along well and plans should be ready for release any day now, so here's the start of a build guide. Anyone familiar with FT plans should be familiar with most of the building techniques, so this won't be a step by step tutorial. I aim to cover the things that are a little different or may not be obvious from the plans.
I will be releasing plans with two different fuselages; one long and one short. The long fuselage is scale accurate, but will require extra nose weight and/or a concerted effort to keep weight out of the tail. (eg. white gorilla glue instead of hot glue).
The short fuselage is intended to let you build with hot glue and standard FT build techniques without pushing the CG too far aft.
Starting with the fuselage, you'll need to prep your parts. Weed out the various cavities as marked, cut bevels in control surfaces, etc.
To keep the tail as light as possible, you'll want to remove the paper from interior of the aft fuselage sides and the aft portion of the belly plate.
The cockpit openings should be transferred through to the top of the foam but not be cut out completely until after the turtledeck is installed.
Doubler plates are glued to the fuselage sides and then the fuselage can get glued up.
There are two pockets in the tail, one in the horizontal stabilizer and another in the elevator. Both of these get a BBQ skewer inserted to stiffen the stabilizer and elevator respectively.
The vertical stabilizer slots into the horizontal, then the two together slot into the rear fuselage.
The rudder and elevator pushrods should run through the slits in turtledeck former 4, cross each other underneath the turtledeck and then exit through the slits in the turtledeck. You should be able to feed the pushrod into place after attaching the turtledeck, as long as you make sure to widen the slots in former 4 beforehand. I like the stiffness of .047" (1.19mm) music wire for pushrods, especially on long sections like this. Carbon Fiber pushrods are recommended if building the long fuselage version.
Even though it is drawn as one piece, and can be installed a such, I found that cutting the turtledeck into a forward, mid, and aft section which are installed separately makes for a much easier process.
The power pod is a minimal affair, and only necessary if using an FT firewall. If you're custom cutting your own firewall you can simply make it wide enough to glue to the forward end of the doubler plates.
If using the power pod, the open side of the C faces down. When you glue the firewall on, flush the bottom edge to the bottom of the power pod sides. Wrap tape around the firewall for reinforcement, then glue the power pod in, sliding the firewall up into the wide slot in the fuselage. (Pictures are of an earlier power pod. The one in the plans has significantly more down thrust now.)
The motor wires route up through the large opening above the motor and the ESC can glue or velcro in under the forward turtledeck. The reciever snugs nicely into the forward cockpit. I found that it is easier to install the turtledeck before the cabanes are installed, then trim the cutouts for the cabanes if necessary.
The cabane struts slot into the fuselage either side of the forward cockpit. To stiffen the cabanes, push a BBQ skewer down into the fuselage at the mark, following the angle of the cabane. Mark the top of the skewer about 1/8" longer than the cabanes, cut to length, then glue onto the cabane and into the fuselage. You'll want to mostly cut out the center portion of cabane struts, but leave it in place until after the wing is installed to help hold everything square.
The landing gear strut will also get a skewer glued along the leading edge for strength. Like the wing struts, cut the center out most of the way, but leave it in place until final assembly. The landing gear struts can't be fully installed until after the lower wing is in place.
The gear itself is 3/32" piano wire bent to shape (per the template in the plans) and glued into a foam sandwich. This assembly then slots into the doubler plates, much like the FT Scout or Edge. The half of the foam sandwich notched for the landing gear wire faces the nose of the plane. The wheels are approximately 2 1/8" diameter and don't need to be particularly light. Nose weight is your friend on this plane and heavy wheels will help push your CG forward.
That's enough for tonight. More to come!