"Whiplash, I want you on my wing..."
Whiplash's hand-crafted Hellcat has seen significant progress on its wings. Each section had to be carefully measured and cut to ensure a smooth fit to the fuselage and engines. A lot of effort went into getting the shape right with the vertical wingtip stabilizers, and the entire wingbox benefits from some new strengthening. You can find more pictures at the CIC Forums here. The finished results look very sharp!
As mentioned last time, I started construction on the wings this week. Here are a few pics detailing the process.First I cut out the section flush with the fuselage. I then fit a horizontal section in the shape of the wing profile to give me a flat reference plane to build on. Previously I simply built the entire wing as a hollow box shape, but I think this approach will be easier and give better accuracy.
I cut out the hollows where the wing-mounted engine exhaust nozzles will be fitted later on. Next come the vertical stabilizers on the wingtips. You would think I would leave them for last, and only fit them once the rest of the wing is complete, but they actually help me determine the attatchment points for the final shape of the wing. As you can see here, I can now attach the wing surface directly to the top of the wingtip for a nice even finish.
There's some internal bracing to ensure the wings' surfaces don't flex too much. Balsa wood is very soft, after all. I glued all the external surface covers in place, and started the process of shaping them to the final finished look. You can see the wing engine ports quite nicely now.
Things are moving along nicely! Next time, there may just be something resembling a Hellcat to show you.
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