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     Place a piece of straight scrap wood across the horizontal-stabilizer saddle. Sight down the fuselage and check to see if the wing joiner tube is aligned parallel to the scrap piece of wood. If it is not, adjust the ends of the fuselage sides until it is.

     Double-check the end of the fuselage side to make sure it is straight and the horizontal-stabilizer saddle is parallel to the joiner tube. Glue the ends of the sides together.

     At formers F4 and F6, pull the top of the fuselage sides together and glue the top portion of the sides to the formers. Insert formers F3 and F5, and glue in place as shown on the plans.

     Mark the ¹/₄-plywood nose-gear mount and drill the mounting holes for the nose gear. Glue the nose-gear mount in place in the fuselage, along with the ¹/₄-balsa triangle stock. Glue the ¹/₈-balsa nose-wheel-well ceiling and ¹/₈-balsa cockpit floor in the fuselage.

     Glue the ³/₁₆-balsa top sheeting in place from the cockpit back to the horizontal-stabilizer saddle. Make sure the grain runs crosswise to the fuselage length.

     Using a couple of large C-clamps, carefully pull the forward ends of the fuselage sides together and glue F1 in place. Adhere the ³/₁₆-balsa top sheeting in place forward of the cockpit.

     Glue the bottom ³/₁₆-balsa sheeting to the fuselage bottom as shown on the plans. You might want to hold off sheeting the bottom of the fuselage in the wing area until after you have mounted the wing to the fuselage.

     Set the fuselage aside.

Wing: Pin the ¹/₄ x ³/₈-spruce main spar to the plans. Lay the ¹/₄ x ³/₈ aft spar on the plans, but don’t pin it in place there; you will need to pull it up into the ribs after you glue them to the main spar.

     Use the R1 angle template that is shown on the plans to set rib R1 to the correct angle for the wing dihedral. Don’t adhere R1 to any of the spars or the LE and TE until you have installed all the other ribs.

     Glue in the wing-joiner-tube socket and the ¹/₁₆-balsa shear webbing. I recommend that you glue a cap of balsa to the end of the joiner-tube socket; it will keep the joiner tube from sliding from side to side.

     Adhere the ³/₃₂-balsa sheeting to the top of the wing. To do this, I glued the LE sheeting to the LE only. Once the glue dried, I wet the sheeting with Windex so it would be easier to bend to the wing contour. I positioned weights and used clothespins to hold the sheeting to the rib and spar while I let the Windex dry.

     After the Windex dried, I removed the weight and clothespins and then glued the sheeting to the ribs. After that, I adhered the rest of the top sheeting to the wing.

     Carefully remove the wing from the workbench and flip it over so you can glue the bottom sheeting to the wing. After you do that, put the ⁵/₈-balsa TE and the wingtip in place. Sand the TE, LE, and wingtip to the specified contour.

Mounting the Wing to the Fuselage: The wing is held to the fuselage by a ¹/₄-20 screw from the inside of the fuselage. I modified a few ¹/₄-20 nylon slotted screws by gluing ¹/₁₆ plywood into their slots. I reinforced the glue joint with some sawdust soaked in cyanoacrylate glue. This makes mounting the wings to the fuselage fairly easy.

     Place the fuselage upside-down on the workbench and weight it down so it is stable and difficult to move around. Rib R1 should have the forward hole drilled and tapped for a ¹/₄-20 screw, and the aft hole is for the ³/₈-inch antirotation dowel.

     Glue the antirotation dowel to R1. Make sure it sticks out approximately ¹/₂ inch.

     Cut the head off of a ¹/₄-20 screw and thread it into the forward screw hole on the left- or right-wing R1 so that roughly ¹/₂ inch of the screw sticks out. This will be used to mark the location for the hole in the fuselage.

     Insert the wing joiner tube in the fuselage. Slide the wing upside-down onto the joiner tube and up next to the fuselage side. Adjust the wing angle so it will be approximately 0°, and gently press the wing into the fuselage so that the ³/₈-inch antirotation dowel and the ¹/₄-20 screw mark the fuselage side.

     Pull the wing off the joiner tube and then drill where the marks indicate for the wing mounting screw and the antirotation dowel. Remove the ¹/₄-20 screw from the wing.

     Slide the wing back onto the joiner tube and then up against the fuselage side, and check the wing incidence. If it is not 0°, enlarge the ³/₈-inch hole in small increments until the wing is at the correct angle.

     Inside the fuselage, slide the ¹/₈-plywood doubler over the ³/₈-inch antirotation pin, and glue the doubler to the fuselage side. Be careful not to get glue on the antirotation dowel. You can wax the dowel before you do this to keep any glue from sticking to it.

     See if you can install the wing mounting screw to the wing from the inside of the fuselage. If you can’t, enlarge the mounting hole in the fuselage side.

     Glue the wing-mounting-screw doubler to the fuselage side. You can do this by placing the ¹/₈-plywood doubler on the mounting screw and then, from the inside of the fuselage, twist the mounting screw into the wing and use it to hold the plywood doubler in place as the glue dries.

     Repeat this for the other side.

      
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