Wow, you got that fixed pretty quick!

Last shots for tonight before i go to bed. You can see the drastic improvement of the forward gear door layout now that i have fixed the sponsons.. I am 100% happy with this area now and will be able to start the detailing very soon. I've got a few more panel lines to draw up on the bottom of the fuse, and put in the reminder "dots" for the screws and then i'll get back to detailing..

Looking good Thomas. Wish I had the talent to do half of what you have done so far.

Originally Posted by ExtPlt

Looking good Thomas. Wish I had the talent to do half of what you have done so far.

Thanks.. but it doesn't take alot of talent, just a bit of hard work, cussing, more work, and alot of beer. lol

Two more photo's.. not alot can be seen thats different, just alot more of the reminder details put on the plug surface to remind me what type of fasteners go where... Will probably get started drawing up the other side after lunch.

Two more shots showing the other side of the fuselage. All of the panel lines and most of the access panels have been drawn on.. It was also pointed ou that the fwd. inbd landing gear door looked a little small (and it was by 1/4"), so that got corrected as well. Now i can get back to the detailing..

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Couple of shots of todays progress so far.. took about 3 hours to template, cut out and attach what see in the photos. I've got about 90% of the nose panels cut out, with only a few left, so i may get the nose section 100% complete other than the panels with naca ducts and grills on them. I also did a test piece over gun blister and amazingly, it came out very well and only took about 15 seconds to do.. The front ones probably won't be that easy though. I also took a shot of the stack of paper templates from all of the panels i have done so far. that stack is about an inch thick. I will definitely be holding onto that stack of templates for future reference.

Here's 2 teaser shots of todays progress so far:

Another bit of an update for today... I should also have a website up in the next week or two for the eventual sales part. Slowing getting there. The nose section is roughly 90% complete. The rest... is about 5% done. haha..

Couple more photo's of today's progress.. now off to get some rest. I will have a looonnggg weekend to work on this thing w/ all the snow we have gotten. Hopefully the amount of contact adhesive i have will last all weekend.

Nice, very Nice!!! Just curious as to why you work on different part of the plane rather than concentrate on one side and work your way through? is there a sequence how each panels lay on the fuse?

Originally Posted by mndbndr3d

Nice, very Nice!!! Just curious as to why you work on different part of the plane rather than concentrate on one side and work your way through? is there a sequence how each panels lay on the fuse?

I'm doing all the easy panels first... Their are alot of compound curves on the airframe, and i'm working on getting all of the non compound curves done first.. Their are a few panels where i will mostly likely have to make molds to "stamp" the panels to fit the plugs.

Not a whole lot done today.. I had to spend about 4 hours shoveling snow so we could get atleast one vehicle loose.. but that didn't happen either... i ran out of contact adhesive to attach the panels anyways, so it worked out well i guess.

How to build an F-14D B1 Bob style (5 min 17 sec)

i decided to try and tackle the grills and naca ducts a few different ways to see how they work and if they will work....

The First things I have decided to do, are the naca ducts. since they are basically all the same size on the airframe, getting them done will allow me to continue with some more important panels..

First things first,

Step 1. I drew out and cut out a 'blank' of the naca duct from 1/4" Birch plywood.


Step 2. I traced the outline of the blank onto a piece of square 1/4" birch and removed the interior of it.


Step 3. I took the blank and positioned it in the hole cut in step 2 and set the depth i wanted for the naca ducts at the rear and kept the front just slightly elevated (reason why later on if this works).


Step 4. I sealed the plywood with some thin CA and sanded it with 300 grit sandpaper.

Step 5. I made a "box" around the ply plate w/ 3/32 balsa.


More to come later: