Week 15 - 5 Mar 2003

Monday evening the fuse with horizontal stab was taken to our sponsoring Hobby shop for display, (NRC Hobbies - Claycomo, Mo)  It will remain there on display until we get the wing far enough to fit to the fuse.

Tonight was a night of no visual progress, although we took  4 pics to post on the web.  The 2 elevators were finished with the exception of sheeting the second side.  Again we left the sheeting off to allow for
more options whenever we get ready to hinge and set them into the horizontal stab.

We logged 7-1/2 man hours tonight.  Much time was spent studying the plans and modifying the wing ribs for the center section of the wing.   For the first time, we felt like the kit cutter let us down.  One of
the attached pictures show the ribs as we received them, all of the ribs are plywood.  You can see the kit cutter put holes in 5 of the ribs for the wing tube needed to attach the outboard wing to the center section.
 Also you can see that rib #3 has holes for wiring?  We figured every rib needs holes to allow wiring and/or airlines to pass through.  So we laid out and drilled holes in every rib for this purpose.  I don't know how you would do this after the wing was built.  Anyhow we felt the kit cutter could have added these holes while cutting the rib on the laser.

Our next disappointment of the kit cutter has to do with the flaps.  On the B17 the flaps break out of the bottom of the wing and can not be seen at all from the top side.  Of course these have to be cut off the
wing ribs.  The kit cutter did nothing for the flaps.  We had to unroll the rib pattern sheet of the plans and mark and cut them out ourselves.   We realize that the possibility exists that someone may be building
this kit and not desire the flaps.  However they could have done like they did the fuse formers.  On the fuse, where wing fits they skip lasered a line to show you where to cut our for the wing and stab.  We feel they could have applied this same logic to the flap portion of the wing and done the same thing.

One of the attached pictures show the ribs after we modified them and another is a close up of us cutting the flap portion our the a rib.  We have been happy with our kit so far.  Every thing has been acceptable
until tonight.  In reality tonight does not make the kit unacceptable, just not quite the quality we thought we had.    --  Gary Himes

Week 16  -  12 Mar 2003

The night started off with the cutting of the jig for placement under center spar that allows wing to be built flat (so to speak) on the table.  Number 1, 2 & 3 ribs had to have the nose cut off to allow for
the front dihedral brace.  The kit box is only about half as full as it was when we received it.  Checking out our kit proved we are short yet a few more pieces.  Missing is 1/4 X 3/4 balsa trailing edge inboard spar,
4 pieces of 1/4 X 3/8 hardwood rear inboard spars and 4 pieces 1/4 X 1/2 hardwood outboard main spars.  We only logged 6 man-hours tonight as we had to run to the hobby shop to buy enough material for the rear inboard spars.  We dry fit all the port inboard wing parts and clamped/weighted in place.  We did not glue anything tonight as none of the 3 of us felt good about gluing.  So we will wait till next week to start gluing.  This will allow us time to figure out what we aren't sure about (or feel good about).  It is always better to get it right the first time and not backtrack what is already done.

We filled the first sheet of our expense log and the total spent so far on the project is $881.63 to date.  This cost includes plans, kit, plastic window kit, domain name and all glues, tips and sandpaper.
--  Gary Himes

     
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