20 August 2016 – Fuselage Trueness, Squareness & Alignment:  At some point after returning back from overseas I took a myriad of different measurements on my fuselage, from a myriad of different locations on the fuselage: bulkheads, Left/Right/Center, angled, etc. to assess & evaluate to what extent my fuselage is true, square and aligned.  If you’ve read much of my blog you know that my fuselage is not perfectly aligned.  That being said however, I had never taken the time to really sit down and figure out what my measurements meant. After really pouring over them for about 15 min, I concluded that my fuselage is acceptably square between the firewall and F22 bulkhead.  Another thing I did when I made my measurements was to clamp a 6 foot level to the front & aft sides of my fuselage and then measure the outboard distance between each straight edge/level.  What I came up with after multiple measurements, and after recently analyzing the data, is that the difference between each side (at essentially B.L. 36L & B.L. 36R) is just a hair over 1/8″ off.  Not bad, and easily correctable when I install the CS spar & canard to the fuselage, respectively.

For the construction of the fuselage check out the links below:

Chapter 4 – Bulkheads

Chapter 5 – Fuselage Sides

Chapter 6 – Fuselage Assembly

Chapter 7 – Fuselage Exterior