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I had Weds-Sunday off for Thanksgiving this year. Being a state worker has it's perks

Anyway, Between a trip with my wife to New Hampshire for the weekend and the actual Turkey Day festivities I did manage to spend some time out in the shop working on my project.

As of today I have 150 of the 170 ribs formed. The latest batch was the flap ribs.


As always the lightening holes are the time consuming part of the project. I made a video of the process (1.8meg) if anyone is interested.

lightening hole routing

How about all of you? Was the long weekend a productive one?

Keith! THOSE LOOK GREAT!

Where do those ribs go? 170 in all!?! WOW!

I messed around on the tailcone and what not. State jobs are good, huh?

CJ

Thanks John,

Those are the flap ribs. 9 per side. I also have a pile of Flap nose ribs, aileron nose ribs, and aileron pocket ribs that I finished up a couple of weeks ago.



Another couple of months and I'll be where you guys start

I managed a few hours over the long weekend...not nearly as much as I had hoped. But, I did get one of my wingtip ribs glassed in place-

All prepped and ready (before the access holes were cut and smoothed though)...


...and after glassing...


I hope to get the other one done tomorrow night.

Wow PK! You are REALLY building an airplane. By comparison, I think the rest of us are just assembling airplanes. Keep the progress reports coming.

Chad, so how hard was the hinge attachment? Are you happy with the results? Any pointers for those of us who might like to follow? That tip doesn't have any glass on the foam yet does it?

It sure looks good to me.

Chad,

Nice work. I've been saving all the glass work until the end, so your ahead of me on that part.

Where did you purchase the pink foam ? How did you determine or come up with the proper shape to have it fit well inside the wingtip ? What did you use to trim/cut the pink foam ?

I too have been thinking about using hinges to pin/mount the tips to the wings. Would be very helpful if you could share the steps you took to do yours (along with pictures) and how you feel the end result turned out.

JohnR wrote:Chad, so how hard was the hinge attachment? Are you happy with the results? Any pointers for those of us who might like to follow? That tip doesn't have any glass on the foam yet does it?

It sure looks good to me.

So far, it has not been hard at all. Time consuming, but not all that hard. I'm not done yet, and I've already spent 20 hours to get to the current status of one tip rib glassed in. I don't really have any pointers, I just followed along (for the most part...) from this set of instructions.

http://www.rvwiki.org/index.php?title=A ... ith_Hinges

I'm not sure who Papawhiskey is, but this is where I got the idea from...

There are few areas that I deviated slightly, but for the most part, the instructions are nice and clear. He didn't put access holes in the ribs. I wanted nice big ones for easy access to plumb wiring through. Saves a TINY amount of weight to I suppose.

Yes, the foam rib in that pic has glass and epoxy on it already. It set up nicely, and has not reacted at all with the epoxy.

Wicked Stick wrote:Chad,

Nice work. I've been saving all the glass work until the end, so your ahead of me on that part.

Where did you purchase the pink foam ? How did you determine or come up with the proper shape to have it fit well inside the wingtip ? What did you use to trim/cut the pink foam ?

I too have been thinking about using hinges to pin/mount the tips to the wings. Would be very helpful if you could share the steps you took to do yours (along with pictures) and how you feel the end result turned out.

Thanks WS! The only reason I'm working on it now, is because my fuse won't be here until the first week or so of January.

I bought the pink foam at Menards (in the aviation department ). It's one inch thick, and I bought a 4'x8' piece for $11.

As far as fit goes, I used the end of the wing to trace the shape. Then I used an exacto knife to make the first cut, but it didn't go all the way through, so I used a jig saw with a knife blade. Made really quick work of it! I then trimmed another half inch or so off around the edge to get it to fit somewhere around 3 inches or so inside the tip. I used 180 grit fine sandpaper to smooth all the edges. I didn't want to go much finer than that to give a better grip for the epoxy.

Here's the link to my website with the steps I did-

http://www.chadandbrittne.com/november_ ... ngtips.htm

They are probably not as detailed as the link I put in the post above this one. I used that one to do mine. There are several good pics on that link that are zoomable. I printed out the instructions and the pics to use in my shop. I tried to be as specific as I could on my webpages...

Thanks Chad,

That was very helpful. I have been seriously considering the hinge pin method for my tips and will look for the foam board, but it will have to be either Home Depot or Lowes as I don't recall any "Menards" on the east coast that I know of.

They all three have it Dave. Just look in the insulation isle. Some of it is blue and some is pink, but still the same stuff I think.

Nice work, men.

PK, after watching you rout those lightening holes in about five seconds each, I don't know how you can say it was the most time consuming part of the job!

I was too busy driving to get any work done over the holiday! Seriously, though, had a great weeklong getaway behind the redwood curtain.

I didn't say that the actual cutting of alumimum is the time consuming part, that is easy.

Its making the lightening holes in general that is time comsuming. It's making the templates for the holes, then putting a quarter inch flange around the edges of all the holes, then using a push stick to remove any waviness that making the flange imparts to the rib that takes the time.

Here's another video showing the flanging process.

http://www.bearhawk949.com/images/video ... _holes.wmv

Of course now that I'm knee deep in ribs, Avipro started offering a wing spar/rib kit for people who wanted to build but not have to fabricate the actual ribs or spars. They were a couple months late to get my money. Oh well, I'm learning a lot as I go and that's the whole purpose of this hobby isn't it?

Great work guys. You are all making excellent progress.

Chad we are going to have to watch your web site closely. Those two tips (pun intended) of using the foam rib and using hinges are valuable.

PK you are blowing me away buddy. I have scratch built one airplane in my life and it was 1/10th the size of what you are building. I simply don't have the patience to do another.

Antony