In this post you’ll see the Right Fuselage Side finished and ready to go, as in the first two pics below. I added a non-plans hard point just forward and about even with the top of the fuselage side control stick depression. The hard point is made of 1/4″ Finnish Birch and will be used as a foundation for a RAM accessory mount, maybe anything else that crops in the future as well. With the instrument panel it place, it will sit just in front of the panel and tucked away under the top longeron. I micro’d it in and weighed it down while it cured (see pics below).
Next, below you’ll see the Left Side Fuselage being made out of a much larger number pieces of small foam as compared to the three (3) pieces that make up the right side. This is per plans and it allows the builder to save costs on foam. Once under fiberglass, the left side fuselage will be just as strong as the right side fuselage, even though it’s made up of a lot more pieces micro’d together.
The last picture in the row shows the left side and right side sets of LWX and LWY spruce hard points. These literally tie the entire major components of the Long-EZ together. LWX serves as the rear seat mounting brackets on each side (only mounted with FLOX and fiberglass) and also as the main gear’s front bracket hard point. LWY serves as the main gear’s rear bracket hard point for the top side of the bracket, and each side acts as a shelf to hold up the CenterSection (CS) Spar where it crosses through the fuselage in the back. Moreover, LWY gets bolted to the CS Spar on each side to a piece of angled metal that also juts rearward through the firewall and makes up the two lower engine mounts.
In the pictures below you’ll see the right fuselage side with the RAM mount hard point curing (top of pic) inside the foyer of my house. I had to get out of the way and off the main work bench so I could micro all the pieces of foam together that make up the left fuselage side. The clamped monstrosity in the foreground is the top longeron, which is constructed of two pieces of Spruce floxed together. Since I already cut out the firewall about 1.2″ wider than stock (I made every bulkhead wider), then I had to make the longerons and lower stringers (longerons) wider as well since the engine mounts sit on the inside of the longerons, and to make a stock engine mount work, I had to bring the mounts back inboard (thicker longerons) to get the mounts back into what would be their original plans-sized position.
The pictures below are simply of the Spruce used for the entire aircraft build. Since it was my first time building with Spruce, especially on a real aircraft, I commemorated the moment with a pic of the label.
