Here's the aft skeleton assembled and attached to the main structure. When I say this fuselage is solid, I'm not kidding. Talk about
over-engineered! It's solid interlockng frames from the forward spar slot back to the tail. And is it ever HEAVY! This is a good overall
shot illustrating how big she's getting, shown on an 18" mat.
Here we have an intercooler duct box:
And the duct box installed in the fuselage. That sloped piece inside comes up and joins the fuse skin, so that's why it's painted with
the patterns.
Next couple of skin parts installed, and the turbocharger just barely visible at the top (The round thing). I alluded to this earlier,
but will mention some details about this plane's turbo system again here. As you can see the turbo is in the BACK of the plane. It was
placed here to aid in weight distribution. But it makes for some long piping runs. The intake air comes in the bottom of the cowl and is
ducted to the back. Some of it is diverted into the intercoolers to cool the compressed air, and vented out the sides here. The rest
goes into turbocharger, compressed, through the intercoolers, and back to the front of the plane. The exhaust comes back here to drive
the turbo and is exhausted at the top of this turbocharger (well, bottom, when the plane is right side up) and out the duct you'll see
in the last photo.
Completed rear of the fuselage (well, except for a couple more scoopy doodads added later).
I encountered a couple of head scratchers back here. First, that skin that surrounds the turbo exhaust duct. You can see how it is
curved up on the sides. The way this part is designed, it is one piece and the part at the front of the duct was supposed to be curved
up like the sides. I don't know about you other hombres, but I just don't have the mojo to be able to make such a complicated bend and
make it look like something. So I cheated and trimmed the part back around that duct so I did not have to curve it, plus cut it into 2
parts to make the whole thing easier.
The other thing is that all the parts on this model are printed assuming you might leave the wheels up, so you have to cut out the tail
wheel opening. No biggie, but the wheel well inner liner was also solid, so I had to glue it on first to get it stable, cut the opening
from the skins and put them on, and finally use the skin openings as a guide to cut out the liner opening. Maybe this is standard, but
it's my first such encounter.
