Keil Kraft Senator Fuselage

Although it was a very busy week I managed to find some hobby time by working on the fuselage of the Senator at sunrise and also very late at night.  My intent was to follow the plans exactly and to keep the weight as low as possible. However,  I decided to add some more rigidity by adding some extra diagonal bracing on the underside of the nose.

To try and avoid any warping I also added two 1/8" sheet formers in the box section under the wings and behind the nose section.  The nose was a little more challenging than I anticipated and I had to re-cut the sheet balsa three times before I was finally happy with shape and fit of the nose panels.

Not too bad really, no warping and an improvement on the fuselage I built when I was a teenager.  Just a little heavier than the original design, but I hope to save some weight on the wing ribs.

Fuselage now shaping up..

This weekend I managed to find a few spare hours to assembly about 80% of the Sapphire's fuselage.  I wasn't too difficult to build.  The kit required splicing two pieces of 2.5mm square strip balsa to make each of the bottom fuselage longerons - instead I hand cut full length ones from some 2.5mm thick sheet balsa which I hope will be slightly stronger.

The fuselage formers F2 and F3 that give the initial rigidity to the body were a little too flimsy for my liking.  The 1.5 mm thick front former split on the grain, so in retrospect I think I should have cut my own formers from 2.5mm balsa for added strength.  As it was, I added some balsa strip along the top and bottom of the formers to add some extra strength.

I just now need to finish adding the width-wise balsa strip to complete the main body and then I need to knuckle down to shaping he nose block.