Wings and control system

Both wing jigs are now complete. All of the ribs have been cut except for the outboard left side rib. They have been microed together a well.

Work has begun on the control system. You'll notice the small cylinders, these will slide into the control system rod and help hold the rod end in place.

Spar is finished (sort of)!

The spar is now completed, however I have mad a large mistake. There is a single ply of bidirectional glass the is placed over the unidirectional strips over the hard points where the wings attach. I could not get peel ply to stick on the BID since it was on the corner, leaving me with a nice and pokey edge.

When I tried to sand it down so I did not cut myself, I accidentally sanded into the UND strips (DOH!). I will sand the layup down and redo it.

Also, the wing jigs are almost complete. I'm running low on Bondo and the extreme heat is causing it to cure even more rapidly than usual, making it very difficult to work with.

More Spar

So the labor of love continues on the main spar.

The aluminum wing attachment points were floxed in place and were glasses over.

The baggage hole was also cut out. It will soon be glasses over. I am using the optional layups

A little bit of everything

Wow! It is so much easier to work on the project since it is right outside the door! I now have the right side consoles ready to be glassed, a handy map hole (still needs a touch of final sanding), and 2/3 of the wing templates.

Also those pesky nose blocks were cut out. I was amazed to find that they were complete chunks of urethane foam.

Moved Again

Since I've got six good weeks to build, project was moved back home. Many thanks to my mom who was willing to move her car to make room. And while we were at it, we test-fitted the spar.

Spar: Steps 5 & 6

OK, so steps 5 & 6 are now complete. Of course we're using the "Work and weight-saving layups" (UND instead of BID).

As we were about to lay down the shear web at 8 o'clock in the evening, we were a bit afraid of having to go until 2 in the morning, but we had it down and cleaned up in 2 1/2 hours!

Spar: Steps 3 and 4

Lots of Fun! Microed The Urethane pieces down. Really using those Sandbags!

Glassed Forward PVC foam pieces on the spar (Step 3) with peel ply on the edges. They look great.

Finally, the feature of today's work, the dreaded inside layup of Step 4. I looked around other build logs before starting this and noted that most people spent around 7 hours on this layup. With my dad and I laying glass and my mom mixing epoxy, we tackled this beast in 4.5 hours. That makes me feel pretty good! As others noted getting the one layer of BID to stay on the side was a real pain, but we managed. I'm very happy and am satisfied with the end result. I'll knife trim it tonight.

Step 4 really wore me out, my brain's aching as I write this so I won't be anything else today.

Nose Job

 So the Nose has had some work recently (very punny). I'v glassed the area aft of the nose gear in the retracted position and the area forward of the NB.

Texas has been hit by a bit of cool air awhile ago, and we actually had to break our propane heater to warm things up (I know what you're thinking: In TEXAS?)

Next up is our work on the spar. The jig is finished, and I cut out all of the foam pieces and LWA aluminum pieces. I also sanded down the wing attach points on the urethane pieces. 

Last but not least, we're finally getting around to getting weights to hold things in place while curing. We decided lead shot bags would be too expensive, so we chose sand. The sandbags are made from polypropylene bags (If you need some, contact me, we had to buy 1000) filled with sand. The bags are then closed up by use of a food storage machine. It's one of 'em fancy gadgets that suck the air out so food lasts longer in the freezer. Mom gets it when we're done. We've calculated that a 60 lb. bag of sand fills about 20 bags, so each bag is about 3 lb. We've already made around 40 in one night.