The radius is pretty sharp for the 1/16" bias-ply birch. It took a fair amount of coaxing to get the skin tight to the ribs, especially from 2" to 6" back from the nose on the top. In the image above you can see where I needed to use some oak boards under the straps for extra pressure in that area.
On the strut-braced wing with two struts per wing, the leading edge is not normally load carrying - the chordwise moment is directly carried by the struts. So why use the expensive 45-degree plywood? The primary reason is because the bias-ply holds shape better between the ribs with less tendency for warpage. The other reason is that it does offer some degree of structural redundancy. Even though the skin cannot resist the moment from all the design flight loads, there is a good chance that it would be sufficient to resist 1G loads in the event of a rear strut failure.
1 hr.
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