ZNLine Factory Enigma Build by Mark Novack

This takes just a couple of minutes. The tail wheel mounting block. This is not rocket science here. A small piece of light ply (some may insist upon heavier wood, but again, we have never lost a tail wheel assembly), a dab of epoxy, and we have finished the landing gear mounts. This piece is about 8mm from the end of the fuselage and about 6-7 cm long. It will hold the screws for the MK tail wheel assembly.

This is by no means required, but we decided to add it for longevity's sake. A small carbon ribbon bordering the opening of the landing gear slots on the belly pan. This takes a little bit longer than one would think to display a neat appearance. It takes a little finesse and patience to work the ribbon into a short and tight rope just on the border of the cut-out. After it is finished, it looks as though it was molded right into the original form. We used epoxy and a 1cm wide brush to apply the epoxy and coax the ribbon into position. Unfortunately, I did not properly focus the camera on the subject and instead the wings in the background are sharper, but I think you will get the idea.

Here is when we begin preparing to mount the wing to the fuselage. Things are done a little out of the normal method here. Most common kits have the builder mount blocks into the fuselage, then center the wing on the fuselage and drill everything out together. Here, the wing bolt mounting plates are predrilled. For the home builder, they would serve as a jig for drilling the wing holes, carefully centered on the wing, one behind the leading edge, one in front of the trailing edge. In the factory, we use a CNC routed jig with the correct bolt spacing, with a perfectly scribed centerline marked. This jig has been carefully fitted the Enigma wing and has balsa blocks on the front in a V shape and a balsa block on the rear that lock it to the wing, centered. Of course, after the jig is seated, we take out the ruler and measure wing tip to bolt center on each side, and gently tap the jig into perfect alignment. This method has some real advantages which I shall mention as the steps proceed. For now, lets align the jig and drill the wing to accept the bolt seats.

A straight on view. In these photos, you can see how the jig locks to the wing.

However, we don't use a drill. The hole in the jig is sided for the locking lip on this router. We are using 10mm OD, 6mm ID, carbon fiber tubes as wing bolt seats, so the router is fitted with a 10mm bit. JP will let the router run up to full speed, then sink it onto the wing, and he lets is come to a complete stop before raising it from the jig and going the the next hole in order to prevent any unwanted movement. These are some of the more critical holes we will make, and although it's a quick procedure, there is a very particular method of ensuring no mistakes are made. Just for trivia's sake, the building of the jig took several prototypes and a long days work to make it just right.

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