Pietenpol-List: newbie questions and wider fuselage
Posted: Mon Feb 18, 2008 4:51 pm
Original Posted By: "T White"
First on joining the fuse, the key is of course to make it absolutly straight. If your side jig is intact, you can use it as a jig. Start by creating an absolutly striaight line down the center. Mark your centers of the stations to the rearsupport of the rear cockpit. Install blocking to prevent shifting. Temporarily install your firewall plywood. After upper and lower cross supports to rear cockpit are in you can bend the 2 halves together,making sure they are on the center line. You can mark and remove a bit of material on the tail post but not much, the finished edge wont look like what you think. Some use a coarse 2 sided file and others have used various sanding blocks to sand. Then you can glue and nail in your gusset plates and start adding the rest of your cross members.On the issue of added width. I am 5'11" and 200 lb. with a 36" waist and hopefully holding at that. After flying the Piet I wouldnt go any wider and dont see much reason to. The main issue for me is the length of the rear cockpit. On my last plane, I built the long fuse model, but then I followed the plan for the short fuse model in constructing the bridge decks, while I moved the rear cockpit seat braces back 1" at the bottom and then moved the top of the same brace by the same and an additional 3/4" to recline the seat a bit for comfort. As a result of these changes I have an additional 9" of space in the cockpit, from my face to the instrument panel. Moving the seat back is something you will have to deal with in w/b.Also welcome to the list for Bob and others. It can be helpful in the first post or so to let us know where you are located. Somebody might be close by.Dick N.________________________________________________________________________________
First on joining the fuse, the key is of course to make it absolutly straight. If your side jig is intact, you can use it as a jig. Start by creating an absolutly striaight line down the center. Mark your centers of the stations to the rearsupport of the rear cockpit. Install blocking to prevent shifting. Temporarily install your firewall plywood. After upper and lower cross supports to rear cockpit are in you can bend the 2 halves together,making sure they are on the center line. You can mark and remove a bit of material on the tail post but not much, the finished edge wont look like what you think. Some use a coarse 2 sided file and others have used various sanding blocks to sand. Then you can glue and nail in your gusset plates and start adding the rest of your cross members.On the issue of added width. I am 5'11" and 200 lb. with a 36" waist and hopefully holding at that. After flying the Piet I wouldnt go any wider and dont see much reason to. The main issue for me is the length of the rear cockpit. On my last plane, I built the long fuse model, but then I followed the plan for the short fuse model in constructing the bridge decks, while I moved the rear cockpit seat braces back 1" at the bottom and then moved the top of the same brace by the same and an additional 3/4" to recline the seat a bit for comfort. As a result of these changes I have an additional 9" of space in the cockpit, from my face to the instrument panel. Moving the seat back is something you will have to deal with in w/b.Also welcome to the list for Bob and others. It can be helpful in the first post or so to let us know where you are located. Somebody might be close by.Dick N.________________________________________________________________________________