Week 13 -19 Feb 2003

It seems that every other week we have great visual impact.  We kept up the routine as tonight has visual impact.  Greg was again on the horizontal stab.  He installed leading edge internal splice blocks and installed two sheets to the second side. 

Rick and Gary installed a solid circle nose ring made from lite ply.   This is an improvement dreamed up by us and not on the plans.  Since the fuse is built in halves and the nose reduces size so quickly there is a lot of pressure on the existing  ring.  We felt the need for a one piece ring for both strength and piece of mind.  I  am told all model B-17's are tail heavy.  So the epoxy and extra ring should not hurt us. 

Next we made the preliminary cuts to the port side fuse for the fitting of the horizontal stab.  We also did some preliminary shaping of the leading edge of the horizontal stab and tried to fit in.  More work needs done to the horizontal stab so  we quite work in this area.  Now we moved to the belly pan.  The thickness of the wing in this area is waste so we decided to cut down the center of the waste area.  We figured we cut trim to cut lines once the belly pan is out plus we would
have a ton of room to work in, plus be able to see what we were doing better.  Once the belly pan was dropped out we called it a night.  We all seemed a little tired tonight.  Since it was 60 degrees F today with light winds, I think we were also going thru withdrawal of not flying after work on such a nice day for this time of the year.  Also we to this point have put off making decisions on servo placement, hinge types etc.  The temptation is to go ahead and start building the wing but I
think that would be a mistake.  There is still a lot of work to be done on the fuse and horizontal stab.  Also we have not built any of the tail moveable flying surfaces yet.  -- Gary Himes

Week 14 - 26 Feb 2003

Tonight we had a few visitors.  Dale Beck brought Leland Bradshaw over to check over our project.  Leland is a first class machinist and is considering building our retracts from scratch.  Also my partners were
questioning how I was going to log our time tonight.  Here it is guys.....Rick = 4hrs, Greg =3hrs, Gary = 2hrs for a grand total of 139.5 hours to date.

Now for the actual nights work.  We broke our mold as we had good visual impact progress again tonight.  The night started off with Gary rough sanding the nose ring to shape on the outside.  Next Rick did the final
internal shaping of the nose ring.  Rick next roughed out the wing opening both in the fuse and the belly pan.  While Gary was meeting with Leland & Dale,  Rick and Greg were fitting the horizontal stab into the fuse.  Intermingled in all this Greg did some more work on the horizontal stab.

After a dinner break Gary was now on the clock with Rick & Greg.  The horizontal stab at this point is without elevators but at the center section the stab extends to the rear just as far as the elevators will go.  The horizontal stab has to be notched around the vertical stab post.  An e-mail from Don Smith assured us that the horizontal would go in without problem.  Gary adapted this statement and stood by it much to the disagreement of Rick and Greg.  Well Gary had to admit he was wrong.  Since we had already fully sheeted the port side of the fuse and were cutting the opening to allow the stab to slide thru, it just didn't fit thru.  So at the center section in of the vertical post we had to cut the horizontal stab rear section.  Now the horizontal stab fit where it should.

Next we all did our own thing.  Greg started construction of the elevators.  Rick started shaping the block of wood in front of the vertical fin.  Gary took the horizontal stab and did the leading edge shaping..  We did not glue the horizontal stab or the vertical fin block in yet.  After we stopped working we briefly discussed when to start the construction on the wing.  It is possible we will get the elevators and rudder built then move on to the wing without hinging or gluing any of the components together.  --  Gary Himes

   
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