Brad's made me a #3 bulkhead. The Soric in the middle looks kinda pretty, too bad most of that area gets cut out.
The finished first-article instrument pod.
With mockup instrument panel.
Getting the floor bonded in.
Ironmongery down in the gold country. Here's the five chords for the outboard spider. More like a decapede.
This shot shows the adjustment provisions for the spider. First I weld a heavy-hex nut to a rectangle of 1/8" steel. Then I locate and clamp the rectange onto a chord. Then I weld the rectangle to the chord. Then I thread a jam nut onto a gun-drilled bolt and thread the bolt into the welded nut. When necessary, I bolt the spider down to the mold flange using 1/4" bolts through the bores of all the adjustment bolts. It's quite a mess of stuff, but most of it comes prefabricated from the hardware store.
Here's the inboard spider tack welded together, and then flipped over and fully welded. I weld stuff like this together using little rectangles of 1/8" steel strip. That makes it easier to place the weld pairs symmetrically on opposite sides of the spanwise elements, which reduces weld-induced kinks to a tolerable level.
Here's the chords for the inboard spider. I had to stop here because I have yet to determine exactly where to place the spanwise locator tube for the aft edge of the airbrake box.
Meanwhile back in Monroe, Brad's started fairing in his tailwheel mount.
Here's the plug for the instrument panel.
A look down Brad's aft fuselage, showing the newly installed elevator push-pull tube.
The instrument panel mold.
The first-article instrument pod getting painted. Going forward, we'll probably make these using a black tooling gelcoat.
Homebuilt aviation is not for folks who don't try things at home.
page updated 29 April 2008 all text and graphics copyright (c) 2008 HP Aircraft,
LLC