On Friday, 21 June 2002, a friend and I transported the wing spar plug down to the composites molding shop down in Southern California. In the days prior (Wednesday and Thursday), I'd fitted the plug table with axles and wheels that engage the rails in my HP-18 trailer. Friday morning, we off-loaded my HP-18 wings into the shop, loaded the plug table into the trailer, added some tiedown points, and got on the road.
The tiedown points we added to the trailer are those little bars that look like they'd go well with 1" nylon webbing. For you trivia buffs, those are called "footman's loops," a name that is probably held over from the carriage building trade.
At the composites shop, we also had a look at the latest progress on the forward fuselage. The female mold of the canopy transparency area is done, and ready for us to make the make the plug for the transparency stretch-forming. The cockpit rail detail is in progress; it's currently represented by a series of end-grain balsa blocks that will get contoured to represent the joggle where the canopy frame will seat onto the fuselage.
I'm pretty sure we'll have a pair of wing spars ready to show off at the SHA western workshop at Tehachapi on Labor day. We might also have a fuselage that people can sit in, but that remains iffy. We'll certainly have many mold sections to show off.
From SoCal, we drove up 395 to Air Sailing, where I had nice flights in the HP-11 on Saturday and Sunday. Sunday morning, I installed a Cambridge GPS-NAV box and display unit, and on Sunday tried out the basic functions of selecting turnpoints and navigating to them. It was easier than I expected, so after that one flight I feel fairly ready to use the system at the Air Sailing contest that's starting next Monday.
I'll try to get some pictures from the trip up as soon as I can download the camera.
page updated 24 June 2002 all text and graphics copyright (c) 2002 HP Aircraft, LLC