Jan-25-2010 75% F4U Project
Smoothing out the Horz. Stab. The ends of the leading edge are scultped with various sanders. The second photo shows the early stages. Then ends will be covered with resin and smoothed out several times before the correct shape is achieved.
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Jan-03-2010 75% F4U Project
New and improved version of the Horizontal Stabilizer. Sections are completed at different times due to the size of our largest hotwire bow.
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Dec-26-2009 75% F4U Project
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Dec-25-2009 75% F4U Project
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Dec-05-2009 75% F4U Project
The elevator foaming goes well, but cutting the inlay was murder. I'm not conviced that installing the inlay will actually works. If the inlay doesn't work, I will take it out of the design and re-build again. I have a feeling there will be a 7th version.
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Dec-04-2009 75% F4U Project
Foaming the first elevator. The foam turned-out better than I expected, but I see more improvents. I won't make anymore more changes in this design, however, I did update the drawings for the next time.
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Dec-01-2009 75% F4U Project
Foaming the first elevator. The foam turned-out better than I expected, but I see more improvents. I won't make anymore more changes in this design, however, I did update the drawings for the next time.
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Nov-29-2009 75% F4U Project
I found too many area for improvement so I created and cut new version 7 of the ribs. This picture shows everything fitted together. The last pictue shows the new HStab glued and clamped together. This new design took 25 minutes to put together and glue.
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Nov-28-2009 75% F4U Project
The new ribs are being fitted onto the spar, with the new trailing edge alignment spar sitting just above the new spar. The last picture shows the new reinforced leading edge.
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Nov-15-2009 75% F4U Project
On the far left, you can see the new spar being laminated. In the middle you can see the new Leading edge design and that the ribs of the elevator now include the rivet holes for the bearing.
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Nov-13-2009 75% F4U Project
A design flaw was found and I had to go back and try to figure out what the elevators appeared to be so small. It turns out that the Spare was exactly 1.5" too far aft. Unsing the lessons learned thus far, I started completely over from scratch and improved the design.
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Oct-10-2009 75% F4U Project
Today we laid in the 2nd layer of glass.
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Oct-07-2009 75% F4U Project
Now that the surface is smooth, we laid the first layer of fiberglass.
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Oct-6-2009 75% F4U Project
Right HStab tip still needs work, but is almost complete.
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Oct-5-2009 75% F4U Project
Left side started and almost finished. Needs to be sanded into final
shape after the curing.
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Sept-27-2009 75% F4U Project
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Sept-26-2009 75% F4U Project
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Sept-25-2009 75% F4U Project
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Sept-24-2009 75% F4U Project
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Sept-23-2009 75% F4U Project
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Sept-22-2009 75% F4U Project
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Sept-21-2009 75% F4U Project
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Sept-20-2009 75% F4U Project
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Sept-19-2009 75% F4U Project
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Sept-7-2009 75% F4U Project
Pardon the mess! These two pictures give you a good idea on
how big the stabilizer is in relationship to the rest of the plane.
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Sept-6-2009 75% F4U Project
We cut the spar for the stabilizer and decided to lay it into approximate
position.
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Sept-5-2009 75% F4U Project
The new version of the ribs fit much better and notice that I added an newly
designed alignment piece to the nose. This new piece not only keeps
the ribs straight, but it also helps with the spacing. This thing is
Big! ...and I haven't even got the elevator attached yet.
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Sept-3-2009 75% F4U Project
Several improvements were found when we assembled the ribs, so we went back and made changes to the master drawings. We will re-cut all ribs again tomorrow.
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August-30-2009 75% F4U Project
Cutting of the all new redesign of the Horizontal Stabilizer begins!
While waiting for the Horizontal Stabilizer part to be cut out, I stuck in old gauges in to the instrument panel for fun.
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August-22 & 23 of 2009 75% F4U Project
Nothing but solid work for getting a new stabilizer designed. There
was nothing wrong with the old design. However, the former design
works better for a 1/5th scale aircraft than it does a 3/4 scale. So
I decided to pull out my original design that I created a few years ago for the
old 70% scale project (which we will not be building) and scale it up and
improve it.
My old 70% design
called for fewer ribs but more support than I felt was needed to make the
plug. So I changed the design to add more ribs and have most ribs evenly spaced. This
will make the foaming process even easier and the whole piece stronger.
The solid modeling software used does not do all the work for cutting the
Elevator, so I exported the drawing into CAD and did all that work separately.
(No pictures of that process shown) |