Laying out the Tail

Once the tubing arrived, I had the jig table built, and we finally cleared off the garage sale remnants, it was time to lay out the tail surfaces.

Horizontal stabilizer leading edge

The dimensions on the plans were marked out on the table and centerlines were drawn in. Then I could offset that centerline to mark out where edges of the tubing should land. Jig blocks can then be screwed down touching that edge line. I'll skip a lot of the specifics because it's hard to visualize without pictures and I took very few pictures. Each tail surface is made up of a tubing perimeter and C-shaped sheet metal ribs. The ribs were bent up out of sheet steel with a borrowed bending brake.

Bending tool

The trickiest part of these surfaces was bending the leading edges around the 5-1/2" curves called out on the plans. The radius is tight enough that I could not bend the tubing without kinking, even when packed tightly with sand. I decided to try building a sort-of mandrel bender. The device I came up with has a bending die on a long handle that cradles the tubing and forces it around a round jig block. It took a couple sample pieces to get the hang of it and dial-in the bender, but the bends turned out well enough.

Vertical stabilizer and rudder laid out

Once everything was laid out, I could tack-weld it all together and pull it all out of the jigs.

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Drag wires

Progress on the airplane has been very limited as of late. It has, however, been made. After a long episode of researching and calculating I have found drag wires. Not the drag wires the plans call for, but still. The plans want 1050 alloy steel wire to be threaded with a #6-40 thread and retained with what are essentially spoke-nipples from motorcycles wheels. The aircraft rated nipples are about $7 each and I need 24 of them. Spoke nipples are 20 to 50 cents each. We'll, I wasn't going to spend $170 on bolts, but $12 seemed reasonable, so I ordered a bunch of spoke nipples. I had intended to match the thread of the nipples with my drag wire stock, but they are just irregular enough that I couldn't find a thread that matched and it seemed like sending wires out to have the correct thread rolled on wouldn't be worth the effort. So, despite having bought my spoke nipples, I abandoned the idea of using them. Enter the Baby Great Lakes. I researched drag wires and alt...

Where to start?

So, where does one start when building an airplane? The answer changes from person to person. The kernel of inspiration to build an airplane was there, as I mentioned in the last post, from the time and effort it took to build the Spirit. But what plane? I looked at the trusty Pietenpol, but the size of the cockpits and the useful load left me wanting for something more. I looked at the Double Eagle and the Airbike, but my girlfriend didn't like how open they were. Finally, I made a list of what I thought I wanted in an airplane, reproduced here. -High wing monoplane (biplanes mean building 4 wings) -Taildragger w/tailwheel -Fabric wings and stab. -Aluminum tube or wood construction, maybe steel -Inexpensive to build -Inexpensive to operate -Single carb engine. -Aircooled? -Two seats -Mostly enclosed cockpit (not a breezy) -minimal systems -AOA/reserve lift guage -Amphibious a plus ...

Fittings. How fitting.

Not much has happened on the Ace this year. The winter was long and spring has been very cold, so I spent a long time waiting for the garage to warm up. Now that there's a little heat down there I've been making some headway on the next step of my wing build: fittings. I copied the parts off the plans into CAD and then printed them onto cardstock to use as patterns when laying fittings out on the steel stock. First I tackled the brackets that will hold the pulleys for the aileron cables. I have a lot of extra material in case I had to remake these. The next step was to bend up my fittings. There is one fitting that mounts to the forward side of the strut which gets bent to a 90° angle. The fitting which mounts to the aft side of the spar gets bent at about an 85° angle. I forget the exact number, but don't feel like looking it up at the moment. Next I cut out the aileron control horns. My Harbor Freight porta-band chucked into my vice works well for cutting th...

Aviation Coming Eventually

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