crating a model airplane, page4

The rear of the fuselage rests on the padded wing, with the tail wheel clearing the bottom of the box by about a half inch. I supported the front of the fuse with a large foam block constructed from 4 eight inch pieces of the rigid foam glued together. I glued this to the bottom of the box under the landing gear mounting area. I made this high enough to keep the wheels about an inch clear of the bottom of the box.

I next cut a piece of the rigid foam to fit on top of the rigid foam that I had already placed in the box with the wing half in it. This went completely under the fuse with a cutout big enough to drop the fuse in snuggly with soft foam padding surrounding the bubble wrapped fuse. I now placed the fuse in the box with the tail resting on the wing in the rear, the foam padded rigid foam cradle, and resting on top of the foam block glued to the bottom of the crate. The rigid foam cradle was glued to the sides of the box and to the rigid foam already in the box. The top of the cradle has sufficient clearance to prevent the lid from hitting it. You'll see later where I add rigid foam to reach to the lid at points where you want pressure to be transferred.

It is important that this is tight, and will not allow the plane to shift sideways because there is little clearance at the side of the horizontal tail (see photo on left). You can change this if you want and add more clearance, but it isn't really necessary as long as you have the fuse located well. The box is very rigid in this area.

The only thing remaining in this step was to cut a piece of foam to fit over the rear of the fuse. It slides down over the top of the fuse, holding it snuggly in place. Again, it is glued to the sides and the other piece of foam holding the wing.