The process of turning the various sub-assemblies into a biplane starts with the inner struts being added first. The thought is that the brass rod I will be using is pretty strong and does a good job of positioning the upper wing, in contrast to starting with the relatively weaker outer struts and adding the stronger brass rod struts second. I have also been influenced watching Microaces builds on Youtube and I see the inner struts done first, the outer struts done second.
The inner struts are a mix of K&S 3/64 brass rod, Plastruct .040 styrene rod and K&S .020 music wire wrapped in cardstock.
The rear inner struts and the landing wheel struts are a folded piece of cardstock with a .020 music wire piece inserted inside. This strut is pretty narrow, so the thinnest music wire is needed and the paper cut very narrow. It ended up that MH Ready Patch was needed to close up the seam and the resulting strut was spray painted green primer.
Several struts made from either Brass Rod or Styrene rod ware cut and painted in green primer. Also shown are the wheel struts and the effect I am looking for there is to show the thin inner wire and the simulated aerodynamic fairing with the ends of the fairing cut at an angle exposing the inner wire.
The fuselage is pre-drilled with the holes that the struts will attach to I started with the forward strut shown in the picture below, made from brass rod and the rear struts added next. Ther rear strut is music wire and paper fairing this time around, the Udet Fokker had the rear strut brass rod. The challenges in getting the inner struts right on the Fokker D7, at least in my experience, stem from the struts entering the fuselage from the side, not the top, so the way I approached their construction, they can rotate. The struts attach at the bottom of the fuselage and they act in all three dimensions meaning they are pretty long and small differences in cut length complicate construction. And the struts are pretty thin in diameter.
The rear struts are wire and paper aerodynamic faring. On the UDET Fokker the rear inner strut was brass rod as well as the forward strut. On this build I went with the music wire and paper because I believe the actual Fokker had an aerodynamic rear fairing and also because I wanted to use a less stiff, less stiff than brass rod, strut. Too many stiff long struts complicates matters.
The rear struts are attached, however the assembly was not stable, the upper wing would move as the strut sets would rotate in their fuselage attachments. The short leading strut is added and it needed to be made of brass rot to provide enough strength to stabilize the assembly and keep the upper wing in its correct position. The styrene was not strong enough to do the job.
Finally the third forward inner strut is added, this one made of styrene rod as additional strength is no longer an issue.
I still have some clean up here but this is the overall result.
