Wing, fin, and marking templates are now sized and cut out...
Most of the main airframe parts have now been acquired. For this build, I am going with Estes parts. The tubes are all BT-20, which is a little bit smaller than the tubes in the original kit, but not enough to make a significant difference The nose cone to be used is from the Estes PNC-20 nose cone pack. Again, I'm not certain if it is an exact copy of the original, but it looks close enough.
The glider nose cones will be balsa, and turned on the lathe. This step can wait until later in the build.
For the wings and fins, I happened upon a nice sheet of C-grain 1/16 balsa...at Home Depot, no less!
AND NOW, THE BUILD -
To start off, the body tubes get cut to length according to the MPC specs - 12" for the man airframe, 3" for the two side tubes, and 6" for the glider fuselages. I like nice, even numbers.
Once the tubes are cut, they get the CWF seam-filling treatment.
An engine block is now glued into place in the main tube. No need to illustrate this step, since it is quite straight forward. I'm not using an engine hook on this model, opting instead to go with friction fit. There is a possibility of rigging up some sort of external engine retainer later on, but we'll see.
The side tubes get glued on to the main body in the required position spelled out in the instruction sheet.
Next, it's glue fillets to clean up the tube connections. This always involves several applications of glue because of the large air pockets that shrink and make holes.
The fins are cut out and glued together in the classic Lunar Patrol 'chevron' shape. Skill Level 1 exercise here...
Once the glue dries, the seams are cleaned up with CWF, and leading/trailing edges are rounded over.
Now, it's off to begin the tedious process of grain filling and sanding.....
-To Be Continued -
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