In the past two weeks I spent a few evenings to finish up the wing structure of the left wing. Despite the complexity of the wing structure, it goes together quickly and almost effortless. You can see I’ve added a bottom main spar, leading edges, multiple aft spars (flaps, ailerons and inner spar), the outer wing tip structure and multiple servo hatch supports. By the way, I changed the way the ailerons are controlled: the plans suggest one central aileron servo with push rods and bell cranks, but this hard to adjust later on and also prone to result in a sloppy control mechanism, causing flutter far more easily than with a short rod and a direct connection between servo and control. So I added two servo hatch supports where the aileron servo will go and dropped the whole push rod and bell crank construction. A lot easier to build too. Here’s the wing structure almost finished:

And from another angle:

Then I cut out some rib material and placed the retract rails to test fit the retracts and struts. It looks like it fits in very well but there’s a problem:

As you can see in the following photo, there’s not enough clearance for the wheels, which are 3-1/2″ high and 1″ thick:

I tried to play with the tracking of the wheels and rotated the strut upward a bit, but I still cannot get enough room under the strut for the wheels to fit in. I find it strange, because these struts look a lot like the ones suggested in the manual – they even say you might be able to fit a 3-3/4″ wheel in there… – but long story short, this isn’t going to fit.

The original full scale struts have an offset, where the center of the wheel is aligned with the center of the strut. I initially bought these straight struts because they look like what the manual suggests, they are called ‘P-47 Struts’ and they fit the retracts I chose, being from the same manufacturer. Now I think I should look out for offset struts, because they give me more play and as a bonus, they resemble the full scale struts a lot better. So I returned the straight struts and ordered Offset RoboStruts instead (thanks Aerobertics.be for the great service!)…

Although I cannot continue with the current building step of installing the retract rails, I may be able to do some more things further down the list, like skinning the control surfaces and installing the shear webs. To be continued!