camelfuselage

[camelfuselage]

Sopwith Camel Fuselage

The Sopwith Camel had a conventional slab-sided wooden fuselage frame covered with doped fabric. This is different from the other 2 models in this series which I have built. They were based on the Albatros, which had a streamlined fuselage of oval cross section covered with plywood, and the Fokker DR1 Triplane, which, while covered with doped fabric, had a fuselage framework of welded steel tube.

Construction of this model’s fuselage follows traditional model aircraft techniques and is straightforward. However, the instructions are occasionally a little odd, probably having been written with yet more carpenter’s glue and long drying times in mind.

I left the plywood parts in their natural plywood colour and dyed strip wood with cedar stain as I did for the wings.

The first step is the construction of 2 identical fuselage sides. The instructions offer either a jig or building over a plan. I chose a third option - a modification of their jig idea. This is the kit jig proposal.

The dark rectangles are positions in which to glue wooden blocks (29 of them!)  to hold the wooden strips and plywood in place (presumably to allow time for the carpenter’s glue to dry).  As with the wing rib cap jig, this looked like being far more trouble than it was worth. This time I didn’t even try it to see how it might work. The wood strips are quite flexible and it was easy to use map pins to hold the wood. While considering my options I noticed that the wing mount and the tailplane/horizontal stabiliser mount (the top longeron) are not parallel on the plan or in the jig. Building the fuselage like that would introduce a positive angle of incidence in the tailplane/horizontal stabiliser - it would be higher at the front than the rear. This makes an aircraft dive. To correct this I drew a new line for the tailplane/horizontal stabiliser mount on top of the rear fuselage and parallel to the wing mount. I then made the stern post longer to extend upwards and adjusted the shape of the top longeron at the rear to fit this new alignment. The original shape of the top longeron can be seen in the jig at the extreme right of the photo. 

  Making an identical side was simply a matter of using the same pin holes. 

Then I added the plywood diagonal engine mounts and (many) cast metal bracing wire anchors. The rectangular frame is the front joiner of the fuselage sides - a 2-part plywood laminate. The kit makes much of the task of aligning the engine mounts. If the sides are built accurately, they are self-aligning.

The next steps join the fuselage sides together. The instructions suggest yet another jig made from blocks of wood specified to extraordinary precision. I used a photo copy of the jig, taped it down, and just glued strip wood over the paper.

I fitted the two sides in the jig and glued in the front joiner and the first top former, clamping the rear of the fuselage with a mini clothes peg. Accurate alignment is ESSENTIAL here.

Once the alignment is spot on, it’s easy to fit the rest of the top formers and wood strip cross members.

This is followed by the top deck stringers. When I spotted the error of alignment in the tailplane I also noticed that the stringers didn’t extend far enough back, so I adjusted this too.

Then it was a simple matter of adding the cross members across the bottom of the fuselage, the mounting braces for the fuel tank and pilot’s seat, and the front machine gun mount.

Aircraft have a firewall between the engine and the cockpit. For some reason this is not included in this the kit. Making one was not difficult. I photocopied the engine mount and used this as a template to cut a firewall from aluminium sheet. This photo shows the engine mount, the template and the firewall.

I glued the firewall to the front of the engine mount and cleaned up the central hole with a grinding tool in the Dremel. This photo shows a test fit of the engine.

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