One for archives? The rotorhead took a bit of walloping with a rubber mallet to knock it into place, but I've built dozens of frames and they rarely needed wrapping in cotton wool. I did carry out a risk assessment for this exercise that concluded it might end in injury or death, but as it wasn't my 'cock on the block' I gave it the go-ahead.
That's 40kg or nearly 90lb up top, supported by sixteenth-inch tubes 19mm diameter. Engineering students among you will know that the columns would eventually fail by splaying apart, buckling and crushing Monty in the process. What prevents this is the flight-deck, set at 500mm above the foot-well and cutting the effective length of the columns by 50% to increase their strength disproportionately.
They test airliners to destruction during development, bending wings up with hydraulic rams until a horrendous BANG as they fail at the root. I'm not going to do that here, but I have decided to up the width of the columns anyhow to a full inch. Yes it's over-engineered, but I prefer to come at it from that direction than the other.
