Chapter 14 - Step 3

This step involves making all the aluminum hardpoints and glassing the inside of the spar.

Outboard hardpoints May 4, 2002. Here is a close-up of the outboard end of the main spar. You can see the two LWA1's in place along with the taper in the foam of CS2 and CS3. Before I glassed I did all the measuring and marked where the aluminum plates would go. This made adding them during the layup much easier.

Glassing the end wasn't too bad because I wet the glass on 4mil plastic and then transfered it into place while still on the plastic. I did this for the BID in the bulkhead and all three strips of UNI under the hardpoints.

Inboard hardpoint May 4, 2002. Here is one of the inboard LWA1's in place just inside CS7.

Spar Inside May 4, 2002. Here is a shot of the inside of the spar after glassing the inside. You can see that the center bulkhead and CS7 have a one inch diameter hole in them. This is an allowed hole for running wires.

Like others I did this layup in two steps. I did the center and right half one night and did the left half another night. This layup takes much longer than one would expect.

When I first started laying the BID in place, gravity started getting in the way (like it always does with airplanes). The BID going up the sides kept falling over into the spar. I remember reading about that on another builders website but I couldn't remember what they did about it. I thought quickly and came up with a simple but effective solution - straight pins. I simply layed the glass in the bottom (really the aft) and starting at one end I worked down a side placing pins through the glass into the foam near the top. Worked great and took little time. I then wet out the glass. Once the glass was wet it stuck to the sides no problem. I took out the pins and touched up the glass.