Week 59 - 7 Januaray 2004
Hope everyone had a good Holiday Season, I know I did.
We are back on the project tonight after not working on it for four weeks.
I really think we needed the break. Before Christmas vacation
Gary got the control arms punched at work, then took them to Rick's work to
be welded to 5/32 music wire.
Now for tonight's work, Gary cut access slots in the stationary horizontal
and trial fitted the control rod. It looked good so Gary made nice cutouts
while Rick & Greg worked on cutting the needed slots in the elevators. We
bent the 90 degree turns in the wire and checked fit one more time. The fit
was excellent so basswood blocks were formed and glued into place. As can
be seen from the first picture the 5/32 music wire is completely encased by
basswood blocks.
The second picture shows the control arms sticking out below the horizontal
assembly. The last picture shows a profile view of what was
done.
This may not seem like a lot of work tonight, but this configuration was
self engineered by us and was a great relief to see everything to go
together as planned. This arrangement will allow us to remove both
elevators anytime in the future if it becomes necessary.
-- Gary Himes
Next Rick shaped the horizontal tips while Greg & Gary started cutting out the window openings for the waist gunners. We cut the port side window first. It falls between two bulkheads so it went easily. There is a stringer in the fuse at the bottom of the window but nothing at the top. We didn't like this, so we added a 1/4 " sq balsa stringer at the top of the window.
On to the starboard window we went. The front of this window falls right behind another bulkhead. Another bulkhead falls in the rear section of this window, so we first cutout the balsa sheeting to window size. Next we installed 1/4"balsa stringers at the top of the window between the three bulkheads. Now we cut out the bulkhead out of the window opening and added a chamfer cut to the inside of the bulkhead to help hide from view of the window.
We called it a night for the "official work on the plane" and discussed our rudder control setup. Our hopes is to get the fuse finished just as far as we can before we bring the wing back home from our sponsor.
We plan on installing working tail gunner door, waist entrance door, pilot entrance door and bomb bay doors. Our problem is we can not find the actual dimensions and placement of these in "Hard Dimensions". Last year we went and seen "Aluminum Overcast" and "Nine O Nine" of which we have literally hundreds of pictures. If we have to, we can approximate sizes and locations but sure would like the actual sizes of these. If anyone out there has the dimensions would you PLEASE forward them to me before next weeks build night.
-- Gary Himes
