This weekend Doug Gray came up to the shop and helped me skin the top surfaces of both of the outboard wing plug sections with fiberglass. It went just like the inboards, with no particular hitches that I know of yet. I did manage to get some more photos, and I also downloaded those photos and the ones from the previous weekend.
This update's photos:
Here's the left outboard wing plug cores, lined up in their shucks but not yet glued together. You can see the iron channels along the leading and trailing edge surfaces of the shucks to keep them straight. The channels are screwed down to the table top. The hammer and 2x4 block is for gently tapping the shucks outboard to snug them against the alignment rails. The 4L on the profile surface means that the nearest section is the fourth core section outboard from the root, and is for the left side. Each outboard core consists of core sections 4, 5, and 6.
Here I'm gluing together core sections 5L and 6L. Section 4L is backed away from the others so I can verify some alignment marks between it and the 5L section. The coffee can things are full of lead, and hold the core sections firmly onto their shucks as the glue cures. The glue is Gougeon (the West system guys) G5, a five-minute epoxy that comes in quart kits. For joining the core sections I thicken it with microballoons for less run and better gap filling.
Here all three core sections are joined and I've embedded the carbon fiber strips in the trench in the top surface. Later, I'll turn it over and embed the carbon strips in the bottom and it will be ready for skinning.
Jumping ahead several days to Sunday 22 February 2004, here's the left wing plug getting the top skin vacuum-bagged onto it. We'd done the right outboard plug the previous day. This time we used these paving stones because the top shucks didn't come out with heights consistent enough to let us use the steel channels.
page updated 23 February 2004 all text and graphics copyright (c) 2004 HP Aircraft, LLC