Sunday, September 16, 2001
Which is now done, the sheeting complete, leading edge added and shaped, ailerons fitted but not glued into place yet, holes in shearweb for cables, wing-tips shaped and all filling finished and sanded.
What with a week in Boston, the first weekend with Daniel and family, then a week at Cisco, then driving home on Friday as no flights were available, and the terrorist attacks, a sad and hard week. But now, on to the fuselage.
Tuesday, September 18, 2001
The fuselage in now framed in. This is the bottom half of the fuselage, sitting the correct way up, the superstructure gets built on top. The two grey pipes barely visible running down the length of the fuselage are the control pipes, piano wire rods run down the middle connecting the servos to the rudder and the elevator. Not visible here are the internal mounting pockets for the wing struts, these are built up plywood sockets which the struts that hold the wing fit into. They are carefully epoxied into place with care to make sure that no excess glue sits inside them, so blocking proper seating of the struts. This is done. Two fore and two aft. This is in my mind the weak point of this aircraft, these wing struts!
Also ready at this time, but not shown, is the undercarriage mounting plate. This is a built up plywood bracket consisting of five layers, epoxied together. There is a groove in the long side for the horizontal component of the undercarriage wire, it fitting side by side to provide a torsion bar effect, we make some car suspensions in this manner. More on this later.
