This is how the center pod is started. Ziroli uses a "crutch" piece in most of his designs. It's the flat 1/4" aircraft plywood piece built right over the plans. I use a 24" x 48" x 3/4" thick plywood building board so I can nail into it to secure parts for gluing. Here 1/4" x 1/2" basswood strips are glued to the sides of the crutch. I use WEST epoxy and SIG Alaphatic glue only. The vise is used for weight to keep things from sliding around.

Here the two main wing spars are being glued in. Notice the use of two squares to make sure they are absolutely 90 degrees to the wing root ribs.  The ribs are used to correctly space the rear spar former in relationship to the front spar.

The two bass strips are under tension because they are wrapped to the curvature of the crutch. For that reason, I chose to pin them using 1/8" dowels.

The wing incidence and wash-out are built into the wing by tack-gluing popsicle sticks so the spars are a given distance from the table top. I use CA to tack glue the sticks in place.  They are twisted off later.

Here I'm using right angle shelf brackets screwed right to the building board and the plywood spars to make absolutely sure the spars are square. If they aren't, you build twist into the wing and the plane flies a very short time!

The ribs are placed over a cardboard servo and air line tunnel and the basswood spars are glued into place. Here I'm using SIG alaphatic resin.

The wing leading edge is glued into place after the spars have had a chance to dry.  Remember this is just the root wing section that is built as part of the center pod.  There are wing extension that slide on to each end. The finished wingspan is 114".  This is one big bird!

You can never own too many clamps!

Here I'm fixing a small gap between the wing rib and the leading edge.

After sanding off the excess, the top gap has been filled. Attention to details like this will insure a quality job.

Here is a great epoxy. It is called Hysol 9462 and the jet guys buy it from BVM for $13.00 a cartridge.  I bought a case and split it with another modeler for half that cost per  cartridge. It dries super hard overnight. I used this for all important structural items like formers and wing tube inserts.

Here is the wing tube insert held in place with Hysol.

It's starting to look more like an airplane! You can see the crutch in the center of the picture and how the formers are slid over the crutch to form the fuselage.

Next the center pod is planked. I used 3/16" x 1/4" wide balsa. It's kind of like building a boat!

The nose gear and steering servo are installed prior to planking.

The nose is made removable and slides on and off over the crutch. It is planked. The five holes will line up the guns which are made from aluminum and brass tubing.

The nose is removable for access to the nose wheel steering linkage, the retract servo and the retract air valve. The plane is upside down in this photo. Removable nose section has now been planked.

The 1,800 MAh 6.0 volt battery rides up front.  This battery is used to only power the servos.  The receiver has a separate 4.8 volt battery.  An ElectroDynamics EDR-111 optically isolates the servos from the receiver. The receiver is then isolated from any "glitches" caused by the servos.   Andy Low, Mr. ElectroDynamics is a genius in designing these sorts of items.

Here the fiberglass nose has been attached to the removable balsa wood piece. The blue material is a very light filler I buy on the Internet. Notice the tip of nose...that is a "pool" of West epoxy you pour in and let harden. Then you drill a hole thru it and use a socket head wood screw to anchor the entire removable nose section to a block on the crutch. Picture on this later.

The nose has been primed, the guns manufactured and inserted and the hole drilled for the mounting screw.