Progress!

Today was a great day. We finished bending the longerons (which are neither as big of a deal as we thought they would be nor as easy as many people said they were). Of course, we also had to do some cutting on the longerons (notches, etc) so that they would fit. After that we drilled the armrests* to the longerons and then installed the longerons in the fuselage. We're poised to make some rapid progress when we next return to the shop and attach the centre fuselage to the aft.

* Actually, after looking at the plans they're way too high to be armrests, it's more accurate to call them the upper aft canopy deck.

Bending the longerons

Before I start the first thing to know is that spell checker changes "longerons" to "longhorns" so if any of my posts have "longhorns" in them just assume that I meant "longerons"

So we started bending the longerons and it is possibly the most frustrating part of the building experience (so far). The longerons are long aluminium "L"'s that go from the firewall all the way to the tail on either side of the fuselage. They need to be bent to conform to a curve. Aluminium "L" doesn't like bending in a curve, it likes to bend in 2 dimensions. So it's very time consuming but we're making progress. Don't expect many pictures because it's really not all that photogenic. :-)

Catching Up On Posting Pictures

A few more pictures of our work have been added to past posts, and I have added all the pictures taken since out last posting in December.  Enjoy!

January 14, 2012

January 14, 2012

January 22, 2012

January 22, 2012