Neil’s Blog

Ok, so no real progress from March thru July of 2008.  However this month we’ve resumed progress and managed to get the wing pieces cut, drilled, and attached to the fuselage.  Also for the first time we get to see what it looks like with the dacron sails installed.  If you ask me, they’re pretty ugly :)  For $300 who can complain though.  We’ve been tossing around the idea of painting the center section black which may improve the aesthetics and also hide any dirt, oil, or carbon buildup from the engine.

Click on the thumbnails below for some nice hi-res shots:

The next step is to install the engine mount, and then bolt on the Kawasaki 440.  Stay tuned.

Here are the new elevators and horizontal stabilizer:

I decided pretty early on to try something new instead of using the stock Weedhopper tail section. My design has a few interesting features that should prove useful. More on those later.

Hal did all the sewing by hand on a 25-year old Kenmore sewing machine… The 3.9 ounce Dacron fabric and UV thread were bought from Hang ‘Em High Fabrics (part #’s 3.9 and T46-1-W) — we ended up spending $157 on these. There were no premade patterns to use so the dimensions were transferred directly to the fabric. Trying to get both surfaces drum-tight wasn’t easy — which is one of the reasons the tail section has taken so long. There were many other problems along the way, but the pieces turned out great in the end.

We will be using Drifter hinges on the elevator. Placing them at 45° lowers the gap from 1″ down to 0.4″, plus it allows us to ‘fold’ the elevators up for storage or transport.

The rudder is done but the fabric hasn’t been permanently installed yet. I’ll be making another small update Sunday or so to show the complete tail section installed on the airframe.