Well, things are moving now. But a challenge of this design is the launch lugs. Any time that they are in two pieces, alignment becomes critical; at my first club launch ever last year I the LCO asked me to help a mid-teen fellow trying to get his rocket on the rod, and unfortunately the two segments had a parallel offset and would never have worked. I hate to see a kid disappointed like that, but you don't forget it when you learn something that way.
So in that spirit, we have this issue with the Spitfire. How do you align a 2 piece launch lug to a body tube like that? A segment of 3/16" launch lug is mounted to a parallelogram-shaped piece of balsa and is to be glued to the tube in line with the joint between Body Tube Segments (BTS) #2 and 3. It's on the vertical side of the rocket (All the "kinks" in the outer "BTS" segments are in one plane). But how to line it up as straight as possible with the motor tube inside? And with the other segment of launch lug on the #2 fin? I wasn't about to try to "eyeball" this and try to sit there holding a piece in alignment until the glue set up. I like setup jigs whenever possible. So I came up with an alignment method using a couple of parallel rails:
The astute observer will see that I am actually putting the launch lug on the #4 fin side, as the door for the Flightsketch Mini - err - 1st Tiger Hobbes - is on the #2 fin side. The piece of balsa is from the fin stock, and the spray can visible under the top end at the right of the frame is adjusted until the motor tube is sitting level, as measured from either end. This was a bit challenging, but successful. I was very happy to see that the #2 and 4 fins were laying flat on the parallel rails, indicating as perfect of an alignment as one could hope for. The piece of balsa insures that both pieces of launch lug are at the same elevation.
But the launch lug assembly needed further shimming under the balsa standoff if the standoff were to be glued to the body tubes perpendicularly (that's probably a new conjugation of "perpendicular"...). So after fiddling with a some card stock and .010" styrene strips, I finally got a stack that I liked. A little hint, always press a stack of "shims" like this with your fingers as well as possible, maybe even glue them if it's critical, so that they act the same in service as they do in setup.
I then put both pieces of launch lug on some extra 3/16" rod and dry placed them.
I then checked that the launch rod was parallel with the motor tube laterally. Once satisfied, and now that the rod is as parallel to the the motor tube as is possible, I put enough glue on both (without moving them) to hold them in position.
This morning, after everything was set overnight, I pulled the rod out and finished the glue joints; I'm filleting now. I plan to trim the lower lug parallel with the shroud so as to not have a "dead corner" there.
We're into the final steps here, folks, I hope to be painting soon - and just wait until you see Spaceman Spiff! A fellow forum member,
@Bravo52, is to be greatly praised for his work!