Wings

[jrbirdman47]

"Endeavor to persevere!"

[Brock]

Today was 'mounting day'.  It was time for the wings to meet the airframe.  Although my holes were all drilled to 1/4" I started with 3/16" bolts so the wing could quickly be put in place then I went back and through drilled some of the holes while installing 1/4" bolts that had been tapered to a bullet point.  After that I calibrated two digital levels (they needed it) and setup the wings dihedral at an initial 1.1 degrees on the front spars.  The 1.1 deg is what I calculated as an initial angle to give me something close to 3" dihedral.  Which turned out to be close as I later measured 2.5" with string sag.  I've no idea how much sag at this point.  The rear conduit struts didn't have the 5 deg angles so I just let them droop vertically to the floor as supports and adjusted them to give 2 degree washout.  Tomorrow I'll readjust the rigging and go about making the final rear struts then the front ones after that.  Very cool to see the big visual change, finally.

Speaking of 'big visuals' a box of wing covering showed up today.  I didn't realize how big the box would be.  Cool.

[Brock]

In my last post I mentioned that 1.1 degress on the main spare gave me 2.5" drop from tip to root.  Three inches is plans spec.  Then I got to thinking the other night, long after I should have been asleep, that 27' of string no matter how tight is going to sag.  So today I sighted from tip to tip along the string and sure enough, there is al least 1/2" sag.  So I'm calling 1.1 deg good.  The digital inclinometer seems easiest for me, the way i work anyway.

Today's goal was to make at least one strut.  I know I said (last post) i'd start with the rear struts but then I changed my mind.  Reason is, the front spar, if off a bit, can change the washout.  So I started with a front strut.  It worked out well.  Obviously, making the taper at the fulelage end was the most time consuming.  There still is a bit of work to do on the strut in the pictures below, but the hard work is done.

The green faring is a sample that I 3D printed for covering the struts and possibly some of the landing gear.  Depends how carried away I get.

[Chuck in Indiana]

Good idea doing the front first. It sets the dihedral, the rear sets the washout.

[pappyadkins]

Great job... BTW, on your 3D print... Love it, but have food for thought, what about your control cables up the rear strut?  Interested to see what you come up with... I've thought about similar idea... think I finally decided to go with an ultra light concept of 3d print myself, we'll see if what I came up with works... lol

[Brock]

It feels like real progress that now the wings are held on by struts of their final dimentions etc.  The Aluminum tubes all came out nice at 78-1/2".  Incedence on the left wing turned out to be 0.4 degrees more than the right wing.  Probably close enough but it challenged my thinking a bit.  Since the left wing has .4 deg more incidence what about the washout.  Should I make it 2 degrees from the root of each respective wing?  But that would put the left wing-tip with .4 degrees more angle of attack than the right tip.  I'll tell you what I did later if anyone is interested.  I'm hope'n it's not troublesome to trim out with the ailerons.

Also of note.  The dihedral came out at 1 and 1.4 degrees not 2 degrees as planned.  Hope it's not noticeable.  I'll be flying 1 degree tail low.  Also pictured is my make-shift wing support and the micro adjuster to get the height just right.

The metal ends of the struts took some thinking.  I made a few errors and had to start over.  I calculated I had enough metal for one more mistake/restart.  It didn't happen, and I have about 6" extra metal tubing left over.  Still to do is to weld-in 3/8" OD x 1/4" ID bushings in each tube, then finish the tack-welded rear tube angle slots.