page_title: Macfie monoplane
section_title: Fuselage
hierarchical_section_title: Macfie monoplane / Design and development / Fuselage
caption_attribution_description: English: Joints on main frame of the Macfie Monoplane
context_page_description: The Macfie monoplane was a British shoulder wing, tractor monoplane. The aircraft was powered by a 35 hp J.A.P. V8 engine fixed at the front of an open-frame 'fuselage', at the rear end of which a tailplane and vertical rudder were mounted.
  It was designed, built, and flown by Robert Francis Macfie, an American-born engineer and early aviator who in 1909 moved to England to study engineering.
  The aircraft superficially resembled the Blériot XI in terms of overall configuration but was in almost every design detail different from this aircraft. Like the Blériot, control was effected using wing-warping via wires attached to king posts. However the Macfie monoplane incorporated many innovative features and in particular was designed for ease of construction, maintenance and repair.
  Later, during the First World War, Macfie persuaded the Landships Committee to consider the use of caterpillar tracks in designing an armoured fighting vehicle, which led to the first British tanks. He produced a number of designs of his own, but his attempts to have the ideas officially adopted were unsuccessful.
context_section_description: The body of the Macfie monoplane comprised an uncovered V-section framework made of ash wood, in which three longitudinal members were braced together at intervals of approximately 2 ft. (0.61 m) by wooden struts. The framework was approximately 3 ft. (0.91 m) in height at the forward end, tapering to 1 ft. (0.30 m) at the tail; likewise the width of the frame tapered from approx. 2 ft. 6 in. (0.76 m) at the front to 1 ft at the tail. The lowest longitudinal member, at the point of the V-section, was approximately parallel to the ground when at rest, so that the two upper members sloped gradually from front to rear.
  To avoid weakening the frame by mortise and tenon joints between the longitudinal members and the struts, the latter abutted against the former and were held in place by right-angled steel brackets, which were bound to the wooden members by strips of Irish linen tape soaked in glue, the glue still being wet when the tape was bound, setting in situ. The corners of the angle brackets were indented at the apex to provide room for a steel pin and also provided with a horizontal slot across the corner, so that a bracing wire could pass through the slot and around the pin, enabling a simple, secure and easily replaceable mounting for the bracing wires which kept the frame in shape. Each of the corners of each triangular set of struts was braced to the diagonally opposite corner of the adjacent set. This method of construction avoided the use of wood-screws, which could eventually become difficult to fix and were often found in other aircraft to damage the members they were intended to strengthen.
caption: Diagram showing the joints between the fuselage spars and struts, and the angle brackets which provided anchor points for the bracing tie-wires (from Flightglobal (see Bibliography below))
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