Round fuselage, part 2.
Here’s where things get a little different.
5. Get the spinner that you’re going to use. Measure the diameter at the rear of the spinner.
6. Cut out a circle of foamboard equal to the diameter of the rear of the spinner minus the thickness of the foamboard. This will become the front former of the fuselage that will sit directly behind the spinner.
The white circular former in this pic above is the front former. The former will be further modified later, which is why it has a bigger hole in the center, and has a big chunk out of the bottom.
7. Punch a small hole all the way thru at the center of the circle and slide the circular front former onto the motor shaft. Make sure you have enough motor shaft sticking out the front to attach the spinner and prop adapter.
The flat-top cone-shaped front cowling.
1. You already have the diameter of the front circular former.
2. Measure the height of the cone (i.e. distance to the front of the circular front former that you slid over the motor shaft). You will also need the diameter of the base of the cone. Get this from the diameter of the fuselage.
3. Now you need to figure out how to lay out the flat-top cone in foamboard. Sheetmetal folks have been doing this for years. I used a website to figure this out. One such is
http://craig-russell.co.uk/demos/cone_calculator/
Input the diameter of the circular front former as length A, the diameter of the fat end of the cone as length B, and the height of the cone as length C.
Run the calculator, then layout the cone on a piece of foamboard, using the 2 radii supplied, and the arc.
4. Remove the paper from the back of the cone layout, and gently roll it into a nice cone, with the paper on the outside. Glue the ends together to make a nice smooth cone shape.
5. Take the circular front former off the motor shaft. Slide the cone over the circular front former and glue in place so the former is flush with the front of the cone (see the pic #4 above).
6. Trim the fuselage sides.
7. Put the cone assembly back on the motor shaft. Make sure the power pod is still installed in the fuselage. Add some scrap foam in between the front corners of the power pod and the fuselage sides to maintain a little space. In the next step, you will curve the fuselage sides, but you DO NOT want the power pod to wedge in too tightly or you will not be able to remove it.
8. Align the back edge of the flat-top cone with the fuselage sides – curve the fuselage sides as much as you can to match the cone curve. Glue the back edge of the cone to the edge of the fuselage ONLY around to a horizontal line aligned with the motor shaft (see pic below).
Use several rubber bands (elastics ??) to help hold the fuse shape nice and round.
You will notice that the fuselage sides DO NOT go all the way around to close together along the bottom of the fuselage….no worries! You’re going to cut the fuselage sides out anyway to make to lower cowl/chin in the next step.
on to part 3 in the next post.