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
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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 |