HP-24 Project

The HP-24 project team convened Akaflieg Douglas Flat (ADF) VII from 8 through 17 December 2008. The guys made two more wing skins for Brad's 24-01, made several molds and fixtures for the flaperons and wing tooling, and generally ripped through a pretty large to-do list.

The morning of 8 December 2008, cutting core foam for the upper right wing skin.

Doug helps Brad place and cut the carbon cloth.

On 9 December, waxing the wing mold and the varnished airbrake box feature.

Preparing to lay up the joggle boards for one of the flaperon molds.

And here it is laid up. There are no photos from 10 December, so I think they spent all that day laying up more flaperon joggle boards.

On 11 December, Brad cuts the core foam to accommodate the airbrake box feature. Note the cotton inspection gloves - it's best to avoid handling the core foam with bare hands, lest oils from your skin inhibit the bond between the face laminations and the foam.

Here's how we're addressing the issue of gelcoat cracking at the airbrake box corners. We're replacing the core foam in that area with Garolite keyhole plugs. That should help stiffen the airbrake box ends and distribute stresses around the corners.

Brad trims the foam for the next keyhole plug.

We've laid up the upper right wing skin and bagged it. Doug and I do pipeline patrol as the pressure comes down.

After the wing skin was safely bagged down, I decided to do a little work on my fuselage. Here I've done a little fitting of the jettison hood at the forward end of the canopy frame.

Saturating the first and narrowest of three outside tapes that join the jettison hood to the canopy frame. After these cure there is a shmoo fillet and two more tapes that go on the underside.

Brad uses the bagged wing skin as a table for waxing up the leading edge joggle boards of the right wing skin. As several experienced wing builders suggested, we omitted the joggle from the wing skin layup and later added it as a secondary wet layup.

Homebuilt aviation is not for folks who don't try things at home.

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