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
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
