Remember the wing root mockups we made a year ago? Well, it's about time to put them into action. But first, we need to make the left upper wing mold adjustable for washout.
Doug wheels the MIG trolley into position. We've flopped the left upper wing mold on top of the left lower, which we've already adjusted for the correct washout. We've also released all of the adjustment nuts and cut 1" long plugs out of the target diagonals.
Adjuster clamped for welding.
The three inboard adjusters welded into place.
Closeup of one of the adjusters. The welding is actually better than it looks here. After this photo we let the whole thing cool and normalize. Then we clamped both molds together at every truss station and tightened all of the adjustment nuts to lock in the washout.
After doing a rollover with both left wing molds, we put the lower on the stack, put the upper on a carriage set, and brought it into the work bay. Now it's time to get to work with the root mockup. First I find its happy place on the wing mold, then I glue it down to the mold using hot melt glue and many tiny chocks of PVC foam.
When hot glue guns are outlawed, only outlaws will develop gliders.
All glued in.
Here I've clamped on the locating fixture that indexes to the mating face of the spar stub.
And here I've fabricated a mondo stiff platform weldment that mounts to the inboard end of the steel truss. That's pretty much the end of the work day. The next thing to do is to add some steel members that join the platform and the locating fixture. And after that, I'll make the the arms that connect the platform with the lift pins on the wing root rib.
A closeup of the platform showing how it mounts to the end of the wing mold truss, and also showing the tool chaos that surrounds tasks like this.
Oh, yeah, I also welded four steel legs onto a drum from an old washing machine.
This combo makes a nice efficient campfire.
Up at Monroe, Brad is preparing to mold the instrument pod hood. Here he's added Masonite flanges.
The plane-of-symmetry flange is attached with hot melt glue and pink styro.
Homebuilt aviation is not for folks who don't try things at home.
page updated 15 April 2008 all text and graphics copyright (c) 2008 HP Aircraft,
LLC