C17 Globemaster III - the build continues

So, after the rush to get things ready for the first PSSA meet of the year out of the way, it's time to get back to some serious building.  I went back to the rear fuselage this weekend as I had started to block out with foam previously, and stopped due to a few problems.

The biggest problem was the general "floppiness" of the assembly.  The 4mm ply has no great torsional stiffness, and the fin has quite a moment arm against it.  When trying to man-handle the fuselage, this causes all sorts of problems, and I could tell straight away that things were not going to be built straight or level (not exactly uncommon for one of my builds!).

So, I built a building jig :

The tailplane is bolted to the thick ply base through its tailplane mounting holes (2 off M5), and the front former is then held up square and to the right height by the wood at the front.  Job's a good 'un.

Now onto the wings :

Razor saw included for scale.  This is the underside of the port wing, and the flap canoes are laid out in their respective positions.  The thick black lines are the engine pylon mounting datums.

Happy with all that, I rolled the wing over to start marking up face cuts for the flaps and ailerons.

At that point I thought it best to go to bed and have a good sleep before committing scalpel to wood.