You’re taking a passenger in that thing?? With the fuselage “together”, I could now focus on the most important thing – making something I could sit in and make aeroplane noises! The front and rear seats are integral pieces of the fuselage and form transverse stiffening bulkheads which help the fuselage stay square. The rear…
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Cross Struts and Braces
Joining the Fuselage With the two fuselage sides completed, it was time to disassemble the fuselage jig on the workbench. Thankfully, the two fuselage sides turned out very similar, so the jig had done it’s job well. The blocks and clamps were removed and the fuselage outline was also erased so I could start with…
Fuselage Sides
It’s starting to look like a plane now! With the fuselage longerons complete, it is now time to start building out the fuselage side frames. Two frames are built as mirror images of each other and follow similar construction to other elements with gusset plates being used throughout to reinforce the joints. I am building…
Workbench
A New Hope Workbench The fuselage and wing of the Pietenpol Air Camper are large assemblies that have to be assembled on a large, flat surface. Many builders use the ground (e.g. a flat concrete slab) or join a couple of separate workbenches together. My ground slab isn’t flat and occasionally gets wet – hence,…
Fuselage Longerons
Planing the plane The empennage of the Pietenpol is substantially complete now with the completion of the vertical stabiliser. Hence, I now need to start work on the fuselage. Annoyingly, the Pietenpol timber kit I purchased second-hand was missing the longerons – though the seller kindly refunded me for these. Therefore, I needed to source…
Vertical Stabiliser
Tail end of the tail Now we are onto the last major element of the aircraft empennage – the vertical stabiliser. Whilst there is a [very] long road to go on the build, getting to this point provides some confidence that the rest should be achievable – given enough time. The vertical stabiliser is of…
Horizontal Stabiliser
Horizontal Stabiliser The horizontal stabiliser will be the largest component I have attempted so far. It is 90″ wide which is longer than the workbenches I have access to. Whilst I could have daisy-chained two benches together, I would need a much larger surface when it came time to tackle the fuselage construction. Therefore, I…
Rudder
Now we’re on the straight and narrow! After the construction of several practice empennage pieces and the airworthy elevators, it is time to move on to the Rudder. The construction of the rudder is identical to the elevators – just in a slightly different shape. As before, we set about drawing the outline of the…
Elevators
What goes up – should stay up… At this point in the journey, I have already made about three “practice” elevators. Whilst slightly annoying that I had to do so many, it is all part of the adventure. I have now obtained the correct materials – in the form of a Pietenpol fuselage and empennage…
Practice
Practice makes perfect [ish] For someone who has never built an aircraft before, it seems like the hardest step is to take that initial plunge and start building something. It is almost like if you don’t start, you can have this perfect idea of what it will be like, but if you actually start it,…