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Status Report: #4
That report is about
:
- Vertical Stabilizer - Section 6
- Rudder - Section 7
Finally after many months of waiting we have
all the complete plane organized on the shelfs.
Sunday morning we took a deep breath and dived
into the real work. First one was the VS.
.- Vertical Stabilizer - Section 6
The Vertical stabilizer is a good place to start: it is
designed out of few parts for the sceleton and one bended
piece of an aluminium skin. The construction of the web is
a pretty straight-forward thing: the rear spar and the front
spar are connected via 3 ribs. A couple of reinforcement
plates to make their reinforcment thing are in some critical
points, and the web is ready for the skin.
Once done, the web is fitting perfectly into the skin. Once
the skin is there: cleco-cleco to see it is solid and all the
holes of the skin are directly with the rib holes under them.
If all match driling the holes according to the map. Most of
the holes 3/32''. Dimpling the skin - took overall 1.5 hours
a single person to accomplish.
Exactly as the training project -- just a bit larger.
Done: disconnecting all of it and throwing back to the
shelf for latter priming.
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Rudder has a bit more complicated structue. You have to
cutout this sharp spears that will form the ribs of the
construction. The reason is simple -- the trailing edge of a
rudder is sharp and all the profile is more triangle-shaped,
so a regular type of rib won't fit here. That is why you form
7 DIY special sharp ribs from pair of spear formed pieces
of metal.
When you have the custom ribs ready, you have to adjust
the counter balance weight for a special rib placed
on top of the construction. That one will be connected
with the nut plates and boltes.
That brings us to the final construction. The skins
are two separate pieces of aluminum that can be easy
connected to each side of the assembly. Still all
clecco-connected, but looking like a real tail.
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That two assemblies proved to be a good starting point,
being not very 'heavy' but allowing to study some new
tricks -- and we went through the first scary moments of
drilling the real plane. The progress is pretty cool, in first
21 hours of such a mutual work we are ready to prime two
first constructions of our bird. It wasn't that hard but
mostly like some straight-forward experinece,
and we had a lot of fun during this 3 days.
Cheers.
Roman & Dima