To pick up on Steve A Eberhart's point on vaccum bagging wings. I have no direct
experience of this, but there is a company in Florida (Dynamic wings I think)
that produce finished wings for the Velocity (4 place canard kitplane) using the
vacuum bagging method. The Velocity wing construction is same as Europa i.e. LE
and TE foam cores bonded to composite spar, I have not seen any of their wings,
so I can't comment on the results.
HOWEVER, the Europa cockpit module is produced by vacuum bagging over a GRP
mould, and the result is not a good advert for the process. Many creases in the
laminate surface are evident on my cocpit module ( I think that now they have
sub-contracted the work out and Q.C. is better). I have spent 10-15 hours
tidying up and patching the worst of the creases to get an acceptable fit, has
anyone else had this problem? I do accept that with the simpler shape of a wing
it may be possible to get a better finish with vacuum bagging (hope so, or I
wouldn't want to fly in it!)
If anyone wishes to experiment with vacuum bagging I have a spare vacuum pump
that requires only a 1hp motor to get it operational again, free of charge to
anyone that can use it.
Allan J Hall
(North Yorks, U.K.)
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