On friday this week a friend and I are going down to the composites shop and picking up the spar plug table, the spar mold, and the first set of spars. We're taking all that stuff up north to my shop in Arnold.
The spar plug table will get reworked into a tabletop surface where I'll build the wing plugs.
I'll be using the first set of spars as spindles for the wing plugs. The plugs will probably be carved out of solid blue flotation billet styrofoam. I'll probably include PVC foam ribs on about 14" centers as sanding templates. The plugs will then get skinned with 4 or 5 layers of fiberglass, contoured with microballoons, and smoothed with featherfill and tons of sanding.
Making this set of plugs promises to be no fun at all. It will be laborious, expensive, messy, and demanding. And throughout most of it, the product will look ugly and unweildy so as to provide near enough no encouragement as makes no difference whatsoever.
...What, and get out of show business?
Meanwhile I've given the go-ahead for having a first-article forward fuselage made. That will become the forward section for the full-fuselage plug where we'll mold the aft fuselage and vertical fin shapes.
page updated 26 November 2002 all text and graphics copyright (c) 2002 HP Aircraft, LLC