The following photos show the forward fuselage plug during the forming of the mold sections.
Once the forward fuselage molds are done, my plan is to make a prototype forward fuselage tub, and use that to finalize the contours of the plug for the composite aft fuselage. Of course, it would have been most time-effective to mold the forward and aft fuselage sections together from the same plug. However, that would have taken more shop space than I had available when I started.
A view of the right side of the plug. The orange dots are indexing hemispheres that will index the mold sections together so that all of the mold sections will line up together.
A view of the keel of the plug oriented left-side-up. The right side (the lower portion in this photo) has the completed mold section in place.
A view of the plug while looking forward over the carrythrough cover area. Again, the right side (the lower portion in this photo) has the completed mold section in place.
A view of the plug while looking forward over the keel.
page updated 20 February 2002 all text and graphics copyright (c) 2002 HP Aircraft, LLC