I apologize for not updating the website as I should but progress has been slow since I've gone back to school. Lynn and I have still been making some progress, we've hotwired the elevator foam cores and they are glassed and attached to the aluminum torque tubes with all bearing inserts pressed and riveted in. The NC-3 bearing "L" brackets are floxed into the canard and so completes the first moving surface on the airplane that amazingly moves without any binding or strange cracking noises. Here are some pictures:
The plywood fixtures ensure the correct spacing between the elevator and canard since the elevator actually moves like a fowler flap. Because of the hinge point being at the bottom of the circular torque tube (apparent by the steel rod protruding from the end of the elevator bearing insert) the elevator actually translates down and aft allowing air to flow from the bottom side trailing edge of the canard over the top of the elevator. This increases the airflow over the top of the elevator giving it more lift or pitch up performance which is good for take-off. All of these pictures are with the canard/elevator upside down.
The copper colored "L" shaped brackets with the two holes are what the elevator pivots on. The portion of the bracket with the two holes will be embedded in the canard with flox. In these pictures they are resting on the top of the canard to determine where to cut the slots for installation.
Here the wingtip foam cores are rough cut to size and microed to the end of the canard ready to be shaped. The white fixtures on the top of the canard are just so I can flip the hole assembly upside down to shape the bottom side. You can see the stainless steel hinge pin sticking out which is important, if this were to be pushed in beyond the the end of the foam it would not be possible to remove the elevators. The front has a nail pressed in to hold the foam core in place while the micro cures.
Friday Oct 9, 2009
Here are some pictures of the completed canard tip with the channel for the hinge pin. I glued some 36 grit sand paper to a restaurant type mustard bottle and shaped the foam per a template provided in the plans. I'll have to find the pictures of shaping the foam, that's what really intrigued me to this type of construction to be able to make complex shapes so easily.
The translucent perimeter of the tip is created by a fiberglass/flox/fiberglass edge or what's called a flox corner. A flox corner was made after the upper skin had cured then a 1/2 inch edge of the foam was sanded away and filled with flox and then the bottom skin layed up. This makes for a very tough edge. The trialing edge tapers nicely to just a glass to glass edge.
