Attaching the Fin

After a break to prepare a Cyril for the F3B season it's back to the Phase 5.
Next job is to glue to the fin to the fuselage.

When the fin is glued on it has to be jigged up with anything to hand to keep it all straight and true.

The fuselage and fin are both held firmly in position.

Building the Fin

The fin is a hollow structure. The bottom section is made of ply and holds the bellcrank. The rest is balsa.




Ply sides with spacers of 3 x 1/32" ply to centre the bellcrank







The 1/8" x 3/8" balsa internals and bellcrank in place.







The fin being assembled.

Tailplanes & Bellcrank

The next step is to build the fin.
Before I do this I like to install the wires in the tailplanes to ensure that they line up correctly with the bellcrank. The easiest way to do this is glue the wires in place using the bellcrank as a jig.

More Fuselage

Although not required yet, I could not resist attacking the fuselage with the razor plane to do a bit of initial shaping.






The plan shows a plastic bellcrank but as I don't have one, I have made a glass version.

Top Sheeting, Nose and Hatch

Once the bottom sheeting has dried it's time to start on the top.


Before putting on the top sheeting I like to glue in cross grain gusset to held prevent the fuselage sides from pulling apart in an 'arrival'.







The nose and hatch in place. Starting to look 'Fossy'








Tailplanes being glued.

Sheeting the Bottom of the Fuselage

The next step is to sheet the bottom of the fuselage.




The rear is sheeted with 3/16" balsa.

The next two sections are 1/2" balsa.

Joining the Fuselage Sides

The next step is to join the fuselage sides.


The fuselage is joined inverted on the bench. The rear is supported off the bench to allow room for F2 and clamped at the front.




F2 is held in place by the pressure from the clamp at the front. A datum line is drawn drawn on the board to ensure the fuselage doesn't resemble a banana.

Fuselage Continued

Once the sides have dried the longerons are trimmed and then the formers are made. F1 is balsa, F2 is ply and F3 is ply/balsa.





Next stage is to join the rear of of the fuselage on the 1/2" balsa top decking






The sides are clamped around F3 and at the rear and the whole lot is weighted down on to the top decking.

Starting the Fuselage

The fuselage starts with the sides which are made of 3/16" balsa. As the sides are longer than 36" an extra length has to be spliced on the front. The balsa I bought wasn't quite wide enough to cover the depth of the front end of the fuselage so I had to splice an extra section on to increase the width.
The top of the fuselage has 3/8" x 1/8" spruce longerons and the bottom has 3/8" triangular section balsa longerons. Being a traditional build there is a lot of tapering of spruce and balsa to be done before it is all glued together.




The sides and the longerons ready to be glued.







Gluing it all together. The spruce is pinned and weighted.

Progress Report

Sorry, no updates recently. The first wing was finished just before the VRQ and getting ready for that sidetracked me, then Christmas activities intervened and finally I had a bout of flu so nothing much happened for a few weeks.

I am now back on the case and the second wing has now been built. To build the opposite panel I traced the wing layout through to the other side of the plan by taping it to a window on a sunny day so the details showed through. The instructions now move on to joining the wing panels and fabricating ailerons and tips but I am going to start on the fuselage next and come back to the wings later.


The basic panels. Each one takes less than a week to complete, an hour or two per evening. Good old PVA wood glue slows up proceedings.





Root section is based on E374, I believe.








Tip section is symmetrical.

Top Sheeting

Before the top sheeting is added, cradles have to be made to support the wing. I made these out of 1/2" balsa. Once the glue is dry it's time to start on the next wing panel.

Shear Webs and LE Sheeting

After both spars have glued, the next step is to fit the shearwebs. This is a bit fiddly as each one has to be cut and fitted individually and then they all have to be glued in position and the wing put back in the jig.




Shearweb fitting in progress. Had to take a break to eat before I got into trouble with the Boss.





Finished shearweb. The marks are to remind me which way round to fit each one as they all have a slight taper.






Fitting the underside leading edge sheeting. Again the wing has to weighted down in the jig.

Spar & Sheeting

Next step is fitting the bottom spar and the rear sheeting. The spar is 1/8" x 1/2" spruce which has to be tapered to 3/8" at the tip.

Work Starts On The Wings

Started work on the wings. Really feel like I'm getting somewhere now.

The wings are built inverted on a simple jig arrangement to keep everything straight.




The first few ribs in place








Overview of the wing so far. Spars, sheeting, shearwebs etc still to go.







It all lines up perfectly, things are going better than I expected.

Making the Ribs

Making the ribs is actually quite straightforward once you have the templates.

I bought some hard 1.5mm balsa as the traditional quarter grain balsa for ribs doesn't seem to be about. Cut lots of blanks, bolt them together, razor plane, sanding block, file and it's job done.




1. Blanks, templates, nuts and bolts ready to be assembled

2. The block ready for shaping








3. Work in progress








4. Ready to be dismantled








5. The finished items, numbered and ready to go.





That's one set done. Now to repeat the whole procedure, remembering to make a set for the opposite panel.

Work Begins

Construction starts with the wings.

The first thing to do is to make the root and tip templates needed to make the ribs. I made mine out of aluminium sheet rather than 1/16 ply. I photocopied the relevant section of the plan, cut out the templates and glued them to the ali sheet.

An hour or two's work with saw, drill and files and a couple of templates are ready for making the ribs by the sandwich method.

Never made ribs by this method before so I'm quite looking forward to it. Time to start cutting balsa!

Getting Started

Why build a Phase 5?

I learned to fly on a Middle Phase nearly 30 years ago at Butser Hill. One of the guys that helped me out was Joe Brazier who was a huge Foss fan and had built most of Chris' designs. My favourite was his Phase 5 and when I progressed onto ailerons Joe would let me fly it occasionally as a reward for good behaviour. I have very fond memories of the Phase 5 as the performance was unbelievable compared to my scruffy orange aileron Middle Phase.

I always wanted a Phase 5 of my own but it had a reputation as a difficult build so I never got around to it. I then discovered blue foam and vacuum bagging with my friend Eric Henderson and we went off Open Pylon racing and all thoughts of anything as old fashioned as balsa ribs went out of the window.

About three years ago my interest was re-kindled so I contacted Chris and got him to send me a plan. The project has been on the back burner since then for various reasons but this year I decided to go for it. I was lusting after an aerobatic plane and decided on a bit of balsa bashing rather than cutting foam and mixing epoxy. Didn't fancy spending too much money; Vectors and VoltiJs are all very well but how many Phase 5's do you see about the place?

I have now made a start. I spent an interesting hour or so in Mainly Planes n Trains with the plans in one hand selecting the balsa and spruce needed to build the airframe. Not something I have done in a long time!

More soon once the actual building starts.