HP-24 Project

Update 27 October 2008: Akaflieg Douglas Flat VI: Pictures 1 of several

Brad flew into San Jose on Friday night, and Saturday morning he and Doug set to work at the shop. Our original plan was to do some template checks on the left upper wing mold, do some tuning on it with filler, and also make Brad's horizontal stabilizer. However, when we started looking closely between the templates and the wing mold, we realized that the difference wasn't as much as I'd thought, and fell well within the fuzzband already established by European manufacturers. Here's a thing to note: When you look at the gap between a template and a shiny surface, what you see is the gap and the reflection of the gap, making the gap look twice as large as it is.

So, anyhow, Brad and Doug quickly set up to make the horizontal stabilizer parts, and also two sets of elevator skins, and also a mold of one of the canopy jettison parts. They're also going to cut foam and carbon for a set of lower wing skins, but the layup on those will probably wait a few weeks.

Here's the carbony goodness I promised in the last Update:

Saturday morning getting started.

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Saturday afternoon, the shear webs for the horizontal stab are laid and bagged.

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The meanwhile Alia plays games on her laptop.

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Sunday morning, drilling the holes for the main stabilizer mounting bushings and stud. I love this T-shirt, but I usually only wear it when I think maybe my mug shot will end up on thesmokinggun.com.

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The stabilizer shear web trial-fit in place in the bushing fixture on the mold.

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Here the veil cloth is already wet out on the lower skin mold, and Brad is starting to lay in the first half of the first ply of carbon.

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Finishing wetting the second half.

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The main foam core panels in place.

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Setting in the carbon ribbons.

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Laying in the last foam core bits

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Wetting out the inner skin

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The peel ply and perf ply are in place, and the crew is laying on the breather. Here we're using thick polyester stuffing left over from Christmas. This is actually the upper stabilizer skin, the lower skin has already been bagged and sucked down.

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Bagging it. With good vacuum established we abandoned shop for dinner.

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Monday morning, back to work. I encountered this truckload of Toyota Tacoma pickup truck frames going from the Dana plant in Stockton to the NUMMI plant in Fremont. These truckloads of frames are actually a pretty common sight, but I happened to have the camera handy and took this shot for an acquaintenance from back East who frequents a Tacoma forum. Right now there's a big to-do about the rate at which these frames are rusting out from under late 1990s and early 2000s Tacomas. I've never seen one all that rusty, and I've looked at a lot of them. Maybe it's more of a problem where they use road salt.

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Homebuilt aviation is not for folks who don't try things at home.

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page updated 27 October 2008 all text and graphics copyright (c) 2008 HP Aircraft, LLC