I’m building a Wingnuts DH2. It is probably the best biplane kit I have ever built, but still has the hangup of mounting the top wing so it is exactly parallel to bottom wing, so that all the struts fit properly. Some kit engineer could do a real service to our community by coming up with a good jig or some other way to do this.
I generally measure the distance of the holes as carefully as possible- the holes where the tops of the cabane struts go, and make a little jig from acrylic sheet, with those holes drilled in it. I mount this temporarily while the cabane struts dry/set in fuselage. That is the way I did current model. Then i mount upper wing on cabane and hope interplane struts will fit.
Still having trouble. I have never measured interplane struts- maybe they are not uniform in length, but I suspect the problem is more getting the top wing absolutely parallel (or whatever the proper relationship is, if they have different dihedral). I have one of the interplane struts that keeps pulling out of position because the posts are not long enough to fully seat in the holes in the wings!
Hi Don. maybe this can be adapted to your use. On my Albatros the cabanes were the most crucial so I lad out the hole pattern from the upper wing on a piece of plastic sheet and added extensions so it was all square. Great visual reference to see that the cabanes were set just right. The inter pane struts mounted so well that they only needed minor adjustments to slip right into the hole on the upper wing. I know yours has way more struts but maybe you can use this basic idea and set some of the keys struts.
Hi Don,
Aeroclub made a very nice jig, but I’m not sure if it’s available anymore.
One from SRAM
And one from JHModels.
There was a home-made jig in a FSM article a few years back. I’ll see if I can find it.
matt
Thanks, Mark. That is very similar to the jig I make, but the spanwise bar would make it much easier to ensure the wing being parallel to bottom wing. I’ll start adding those bars to future jigs.
Try a jig made from Lego blocks. Easy, cheap, plumb & square.
Not sure how such a jig works. Do you use it to get the cabanes accurate, or the interplanes?
It helps get everything lined up.