Sunday, December 30, 2012

Christmas came early!

On December 15, 2012 I walked into the work area and found the following four guys looking at our new spars!!!!

We now have 4 spars, two front and two rear; enough to finish both the left and right wings, yippeeeee!

Joe found a cabinet maker that has a CNC machine, which drilled the holes with almost perfection. So, now it is a matter of putting the ribs, compression struts, wire bracing, ailerons, doodads, and flumdittys on the spars. It's going to get interesting; well, it has been interesting, but now it's going to get really interesting.


Left to right, Paul, Leo, Joe, and Rishab (aka the new guy).

Sunday, December 23, 2012

When it rains, it pours: New guys

Wow, three new people visited today (Dec 15, 2012)!

Below is a photo of John Schwarzkopf. John is taking on a project that was previously stalled. We have thousands (yes, thousands!) of model airplanes that we would like to sell. They have been put into a database and sorted. Then nothing, until John came along and volunteered to put them on ebay. He takes a couple at a time and takes photos, writes descriptions, posts ads, mails the models, and finally delivers MONEY to EAA 143. Cooool!

Who would've thought that ebay expertise would be so valuable to our glider project. The money that comes in is going toward our spar purchase, which is currently holding up our wing project. So, thank you John!


Two other visitors today:

John Kraft's grandson Gregg visited. Young blood--Fantastic! We need all ages, but right now we are heavily weighted towards the senior citizens. Moral of the story, if you are a young or old, or somewhere in between, come on out. Everyone is welcome.

Rishab Shyam also visited. Rishab just earned his private pilot license earlier this year, and now wants to learn about building airplanes because someday he may want to build his own. He flies a rental often, and will be in this area for another year or so while he finishes his PHD in biomedical engineering at John Hopkins.




Sunday, December 16, 2012

Compression Struts

What is a compression strut?

A compression strut fits between the front spar and rear spar (in each wing) and holds the spars the correct distance apart. They are in "compression mode" which means the spars are pulled together by criss crossed wires under lots of tension. So the only force the compression struts provide is, duh, compression. The wires also provide the force needed to keep the struts from moving laterally, more on this later when I can take some photos of the completed wing.

Two of the compression struts



Mechanical drawing of the compression strut, at one end.

The two pieces that will form one end of the compression strut, as seen in the mechanical drawing.

Note: the sheet metal was cut, deburred, and bent by Paul Straney. He had to tweek it very carefully because the fit has to be close to perfect in order for the welding process to work. Both pieces are thin metal, and there is little room for error when welding.