The last time you saw the Mousecedes Benz, it looked like this:

Looking at this frame it looks a bit fragile. I asked Jay how in the world the wings would stay on without being torn off?

It seems that he’s making the wing mount places extra-beefy. Now, I know that Jay flies everything like it’s a 3D airplane (even if it was designed to be a smooth flyer *cough – Rascal – cough*), so there is going to be a LOT of pulling on these spots.

In the meantime, we need to sheet the belly. Man, if I’ve said that once I’ve said that…. once.

Hmmm… I think that it has a bit of an under bite.

This is what I enjoy about having Jay take his own pictures. I never have any clue what it is that he’s trying to show. Most of the time I’m pretty good at figuring it out. Other times, though, I look at a picture like the one above and I first have to figure out what I’m looking at. Obviously, it’s the airframe. Good. Now… I think that it’s laying on it’s belly because I believe the indentation towards the front is where the wings are going to sit. Okay! I’ve got this one. But why do I want to look at the tail? As most tails go, this one is pretty nice looking. It has a nice taper going, which should allow the air to slick its way past it. But is there something in particular? Hmmm.. maybe not. “Is that a tail or are you just happy to see me?”

Now that the fuselage has been mostly assembled we can start on the wings. If you are a seasoned airplane builder then you might wonder why there are rectangular blocks on the trailing edge.  Can you guess?

It was explained to me that they are only temporary. Jay added it into his design so that he could build the wings on the bench, and the little blocks would hold the ribs exactly where they need to be for gluing. At least, I believe that’s what he told me.

He was particularly proud of this design feature, too. He explained it to me twice… and still I managed to forget. I know that it has something to do with hinges and he made a jig to go on the end to perfectly place the hinge… or something like that.

Ta-da!

We now have more pieces of balsa added to the ribs. Oh look! You can see the little hinge spots sticking out. Perhaps I was listening after all!

And more balsa strips added…

I believe that what we have here is a horizontal stab skeleton. But when I squint my eyes I see a wooden version of a utility knife blade. That would be one blade that would not survive the abuse I manage to put those things through!

Finally we arrive at the tail end of this post. HAHAHAHA!! I crack myself up!

As you can see the Ultra Stick is growing. Hopefully it doesn’t get much bigger. Otherwise we might have to expand the basement area as Jay has suggested in the past. Do you think the City would have an issue if our basement consumed almost all of our lot? It would be a lot of construction. And who do you contact to get the Doozers from Fraggle Rock to do the work? Since it would all be done underground I think that they would be the best ones for the job.