The morning of 14 December, fitting the foam to the airbrake opening mandrel.
Something that Takaaki Ogawa warned me about, to which I did not take adequate heed: the sharper the curvature of your surface is, the more troublesome it is to work with your core foam and the more it tries to squirm out of place. I have a go-forward plan that will dial this problem back to a dull roar, but for this round we just weighed the foam down with steel bars and tubes.
Brad lays in the reinforcing tapes around the airbrake box, outside the veil cloth as the Slovenians are said to do.
Oops, you missed it. We laid up the outer skin, the foam core, the inner skin, and the flaperon cove tapes, put on the vaccuum consumables and got it bagged down. Here's Doug and I finishing up pipeline patrol.
The morning of 15 December, peeling away the consumables. We need access to bond in the leading edge joggle, but we leave the peel ply on everywhere we can to keep the surface fresh. We'll finish the peel before joining the skins. After this photo, the guys bolted on the leading edge joggle boards, laid up the joggle, and left it to cure overnight.
On 16 December, here's the cured joggle at the inboard end where the root rib goes.
And here it is at the tip end.
Here's where we'll have to dig the airbrake opening mandrel out eventually.
The inboard end. Note the slight flare of the leading edge joggle so that it matches the contour where the wing profile is similarly flared at the side of body fairing.
With the internals spiders set into place so we can start positioning the wing internals. Actually, first I'll do some calibration squishes to dial in the spiders.
Doug's van, showing the snow accumulated overnight and through the day. Note the tire chains for the one-mile drive in from the motel.
The morning of 17 December, the temperature at Arnold's Meadowmont Lodge is a brisk 14 degrees F. It's time for the guys to pack up and head out.
Homebuilt aviation is not for folks who don't try things at home.
page updated 22 December 2008 all text and graphics copyright (c) 2008 HP Aircraft,
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