Herr Engineering's Piper Tri-Pacer

 23 February 2022

1. Cover tail surfaces. Use pins to pierce through for the rigging holes.
2. Cover bottom and top of wings, do not cover the centre section. The wing tips may not require separate pieces of tissue.
3. Cover bottom of fuselage in 2 pieces: rear piece is until the former for the main landing gear wires; then the front piece with a small hole to pass the nose gear's wire, trim and glue down to the main landing gear former, the nose former and then all round.
4. Cover the top of the fuselage from the nose former to the cockpit.
5. Cover the nose block. Remove the air-inlets, drill for propeller mount. For simplicity, it will be fixed 3 deg right and 3 deg down thrustline as per instruction. Not the best solution, but it is simple and I'll take the risk. Or don't cover the nose block because it will be time consuming. To cover such a compound curved nose piece will mean thin strips of tissue around the nose piece, sanded, then a flat (ish) tissue piece that has been cut to shape for the front end. If tissue covering is intended, do it before drilling and mounting the supplied brass pieces. For the reason that I doubt the supplied rubber will be so long as to climb the motor hook, I shall use the supplied motor hook.
6. Cover lifting struts
7. Cover the main landing gear fairings. Or substitute the balsa fairing with 2mm foam. The supplied balsa pieces are hard (heavy) and the design does not depend on them for any load bearing. Paper is not used because it distorts too easily.
8. Cover the cockpit from the inside, trim the window openings, cover the short columns.
9. Cover the sides of the fuselage.
10. Apply decals to tail.
11. Apply decals to fuselage.
12. Apply decals to wings.
13. Before the wing is glued to the fuselage, do I want the cockpit to be occupied? Tri-Pacer is a 4 seater, I don't know which is the pilot in front so just place 2? The rear bench can seat 2, but I think 1 is enough. Paper pilots/passengers can be cut from paper and glued to a stem between the middle longerons. Alternatively, the paper cutouts can be pasted on the side windows. Doing this will mean the side windows are to be glued on before the wing and front windshield are glued on.
14. Glue wing to fuselage (4 dots). At this point, the centre section  is bare, and the reason for not covering the bottom of the centre section is because we don't need tissue between 2 balsa surfaces.
15.  Mark CG on fuselage/wings juncture
16. Glue lifting struts: 1) chamfer both ends of each strut, 2) insert 1/2 staples (straight) to wing ends, full staples (V) to fuselage ends, 3) poke holes in wing for staples, 4) bend wing ends' staples to holes, 5) bend V staples to bottom of fuselage, 6) dots of UHU together. Really, why bother? Just chamfer and dot them together, any load bearing advantage is minimal when it is just glued to the lower longeron. The V-wire gives a good surface area for gluing though, but maybe a trapezoidal piece of tissue is a great alternative to cover and glue the lower ends of the pair of struts to the longeron, one on each side.
17. Glue horizontal tail to fuselage (2 dots on leading edge, one dot at trailing edge). As the tail is covered, before gluing, sand away the tissue from the bottom where the glue spots to the fuselage will be, this include the centre top spot where the vertical fin will be glued later.
18. Glue rear top stringer to fuselage. A support is needed on the bay infront of the tailplane because the vertical tail starts ahead of the horizontal tail.
19. Cover top of rear fuselage, over the horizontal tail.
20. Cover top of cockpit and wing centre section
21. Glue vertical tail to fuselage (dots at leading edge, trailing edge and bottom of rudder). Slit the top cover of rear fuselage. However, if the horizontal tail's trailing edge is to be capable of re-setting, then the vertical fin may have to be raised to allow clearance and so it can only be glued by the last fuselage post.
22. Glue cockpit struts (CA thread to V then UHU 3 dots)
23. Glue wind shield (UHU to wing, 2 bottom edge). The supplied plastic seems a bit too stiff, consider replacing if it does not form properly.
24. Glue side windows (dots to corners and rear). Can use thinner plastic bag material. This step can be done after the fuselage side is covered and probably before gluing on the wings.
25. Glue landing gear fairings to wire (3 dots), or preferably with a strip of tissue where it joins the longeron and a tiny dot on the wire (or an even smaller piece of tissue) so it can move independently when the landing gear wire flexes.
26. Install wheels (bend and cut)
27. rubber loop
28. Balance to marked CG. See below about solder wire.
29. Test glide
30. Trim horizontal tail (UHU can be softened with alcohol) 
31. Trim CG (stability)
32. Trim wing and vertical tail.
33. Mark new CG location out on the rib doubler for struts.
34. Test flight with partial rubber.
35. Trim thrustline (torque, add card stock to shim)
36. Trim wing (roll, gurney flap to left wing)
37. Trim vertical tail (yaw, gurney flap to direction of glide circle)
38. Mark final CG.
39. Add tail rigging, wheel rigging.
40. Use solder for weight adjustment. Plasticine is oily, will stain balsa and tissue and will dislodge, it can only be a temporary field adjustment. A piece of solder UHU glued to a tissue piece and coated in glue stick can be glued over a slit in the tissue of the model. Glue stick can be de-bonded with alcohol and it will allow correction.
41. Weights can be attached to nose wheel, inside nose piece (dig and glue), against the stringers (slit the tissue), tail post, wing tips.  
42. Masking tape can be used to mark the CG because it can be peeled away. The designed CG location is marked on the fuselage/wing juncture so that the wing can be glued back with them as the alignment marks. The final CG location can be marked with permanent marker and at the rib doubler at wing struts because the landing gear will obstruct direct balancing.