Chapter 7    Bottom contour & Glass                                        Next   Previous   Home         

 

 

                                                                          

Now we have some fun contouring the corners of the tub and glassing the bottom.

The NACA duct and landing brake are also constructed in this chapter. This was a

challenging chapter in a lot of ways. Sanding the sides to contour you quickly discover

                   how easy Urethane foam sands compared with PVC, and how easy PVC sands

compared to wood…especially if you get any micro on the surfaces!  

The bottom may be about the biggest lay-up you will do on the project.

The wings may be bigger, but at this stage of the learning curve this one probably is

more difficult. Some helpers would be a good idea.    

Tim the tool man would like this mod; in order  to get enough reach, I modified a sawzall blade to fit the jig saw.	Here you can see the well-traveled   Tim Lump contour tool. UPS has made small fortune moving this thing around.

                                                                              

                                                                                                                                                                     

 Nat made a plans change and decided on a glass to wood bond instead of glass to foam bond for the 
 main spar attachment tapes at LWX...or is it LWY? 
 Anyway this caused some question as to what he had in mind,  this is my interpretation
 of it. Basically all you do taper the foam down to expose the  wood.

Here you can see the tub is nicely contoured (I hope) and ready for the biggest lay-ups to date,
the bottom. The NACA duct is already glassed in the second pic.  Here’s a tip,  In step 1 run the
Urethane foam further forward than the plans show, many of us have run out of foam to sand just
aft of the Landing brake.  You can run the foam all the way up to the brake cut out without it
causing any problems. If you do run out you will be adding more foam and will then you will have
to deal with the EZ builders age old nemeses,  sanding a surface with different densities involved
and/or a surface that has some micro exposed.  Hey, I warned you…

         

Another question I had was should the tub  exterior glass wrap over F-22  If I recall the  plans have you trim it at F22. I called Nat  and was told to follow the plans. It seemed to me I should wrap it over so I did. Now I think I should have trimmed it. (follow the plans).	Joggles! We don’t need no stinking joggles!See chapter 9 for the flanges and click bond method I stole from Wayne Hicks. Worked fine and is a better choice here, IMHO.

     

              

Glide slope and Marker beacon antennas were installed  in the tub bottom	Good! The kids got his gloves on this time So far I have no reactions using either MGS product.

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