On Tue, 8 Aug 1995, Marc LeFevre wrote:
> Thanks to those of you who responded to my recent posting. This is
> a very useful way of carrying on the discussions that one needs in
> making a decision as to what plane to build.
>
[snip]
> I'd also like to ask those of you that are well along in your kits to
> estimate about how much of the overall build time will be filling and
> sanding the wing and tail surfaces. The tedium of that process could
> be the thing that makes me become a tin bender rather than an expoxy
> slosher.
Marc,
The amount of time needed to finish the wing and stabilizer are very
disproportionate to the amount of work necessary for the remainder of the
plane IM(not so)HO. I don't have a plane under construction, planing on
starting this winter but I am getting ready to build several test
horizontal stabilizer sections to work out the details of vacuum baging
the wings and tail. Vacuum bagging the assemblies should save close to
half of the total building time. I havn't used the procedure on a full
size plane but I have been using FG, carbon fiber and kevlar on radio
control model airplanes for a while now. R/C modelers have been vacuum
bagging foam wings for quite some time now with very good results.
I am hot wire cutting the cores from blue insulation foam. I have
attempted to copy the plan form, airfoil and cross section of the horiz.
stabilizer as closely as I can with out actual drawings or templates from
Ivan. I will advise all on the mail group of the successes or failures
of this venture.
Just got off of the phone with Bob Berube from the Lakeland office and he
is sending additional info to assist in me being able to match the
production stab. with my test panels. They are in the process of
building a demonstrator using the wet layup method. Hope to be able to
compare the wet layup vis-a-vis vacuum bagging.
Steve
|