Two Wings Almost

Well I have been a little busy assembling all of the ribs that I built onto the spars that I cut. Here you can see two assembled wings that are almost as far as they can go until I get the fuselage built. They say that you need to build the root rib after you have the fuselage built to make it match up. I suppose that it doesn't have to be built this way but appatantly makes it easier to match the two. The other thing that has to be done is for the strut attach fittings be attached to the wing and to the fuselage to get proper alignment so all the loads are in line with each other. I have all of the attach fittings built and the root ends installed temporarily. These need to be sandblasted and painted before they can be installed permanantly. The next thing that I need to do is build a dolly to place the wings on so that I can get my tubing ordered and start to work on the fuselage. You may be able to see the ribs toward the root end of the wing that are open in the center. This is where the fuel tanks that will go in the wing will be. These have yet to be welded up but once they are they will be placed in the wing and those ribs epoxied in place and epoxied to the ribs as well.

Long time no Post

Well I am sorry that it has been a long time since I last posted. Funny how life gets in the way of what we really want to do. I had to pour a sidewalk and patio in the back yard to keep the Mrs. happy. I have finished building all of the ribs, cut the spars to the correct length, height, and the ends to the correct dimensions. Jim Stanton from the tailwind group has a great builders manual with instructions to walk you through all of the steps. He offered much advise via e mail for some of the missing dimensions that are on the Aircraft Spruce W-10 plans. This past weekend I went to Baraboo Wisconsin for the Tailwind gathering and got some good ideas from several airplanes. Today I started building the brackets for the wing attach points for the root end of the spar. I have one cut out and waiting to be welded. I want to get all of them cut out to get them to match each other before I weld them up. I will get some pictures posted tomorrow of the progress.

More Ribs, More Ribs

Today is Monday the 25th of May. I built three more ribs today which now brings me up to 10 done. I have started looking at the idea of putting 10 gallons of fuel in the wings. I believe that I can build a 21 x 32 fuel tank that is 4 3/4 tall in the front and 2 1/8 in the rear that will fit just behind the main spar, in front of the rear spar, just outside the 1st full size rib, just inside the 5th rib. I plan on doing this by not putting the truss structure between the these areas in ribs 2, 3 and 4 and bonding the cap strips to the fuel tank. I will build the tank the same size as the inside of the rib would be normally to the same contour to slide right in. The tank will be built out of aluminum. This would give me approx 20 gals in the wings and I plan on still using the header tank but at a reduced size behind the instrument panel. I think that I will make that tank somewhere between 10 and 15 gal to give me total fuel of 30 to 35 gallons.

Built two more ribs today. One is in the jig curing the other is sheeted on both sides with one of those sides curing. I did clean up the garage/build area today as well. I unrolled some vinyl flooring that a friend gave me that is light colored. I am hoping that will help the area be a little brighter. Dark concrete doesn't seem to reflect light very well. So far that is an improvement. Since the rib building is going at a pretty fast rate I went ahead and ordered the rest of the necessary wood from Aircraft Spruce today since last time it seemed to take about 3 1/2 weeks to get the order. I suspect that I will have all of the ribs built for the wing in that time frame. If not then it will be pretty close.

Ribs are coming along

So far I have all of the pieces for the ribs cut to fit with minor adjustments to fit in the jig. I have spent the last few days building ribs. I have completed four ribs and the fifth is in the jig. I sure thought that building these would go a lot faster than they are. I suppose with this project there are many things that will go this way. It is cool though to see that all four ribs look just alike and match up when stacked on top of each other like they came out of an assembly line. I am using the West Systems epoxy to secure all of the pieces together. I really like this product and have used it in the past when I was building lots of radio control airplanes. It is easy to measure, mix and apply. Application to all of the parts is done with a acid brush. These look like little cheap paint brushes with an aluminum handle and black bristles. To cut down on how many of these brushes (although cheap at about .15 each) you can clean them in alcohol. As I said before here are some pictures to see the small amount of progress I have made.

First rib is in the JIG!!

Yesterday I spent about 4 hours cutting parts, soaking the upper and lower cap strips in hot water and getting them in the bending jig for assembly today. I built a soaker for the cap strips out of 3" PVC, and a little single cup coffee warmer. I will get a picture of this device as it worked great to soak the cap strips in. Today I spent about two hours finishing up cutting all the pieces for the ribs. I got the first rib in the jig and glued up with the gussets on one side. Tomorrow I will remove that rib, finish the gussets on the other side and get the next rib in and glued up. I decided to drill 3/4" holes at all intersections for all the parts on the jig tonight before gluing it up since I thought that the rib may glue itself to the jig. I will let you know how this works. I will get some pics tomorrow as well to post since I will finally have a part to look at.

Wood Arrived. Finally!

Well after about three weeks of waiting the wood for the ribs arrived from Aircraft Spruce yesterday. I took an inventory of it to ensure that it was all there as ordered. I got started building last night by soaking four sticks in some hot water to soften the wood and placed it in a bending jig to hold it. I also started cutting the pieces for the truss structure of the ribs and placed them in bins to keep them straight. My hope by doing this is that I will not have to waste time cutting each piece as I work to get the ribs build. There are a bunch of them to build!

April 21, 2009

Well the plans from ACS arrived today. I spent the evening making an additional copies of the plans for working on in the garage so that I don't destroy the originals. I also spent some time looking over the plans and calculating the required materials to start construction of the rib jig and the necessary wood for the ribs them selves. I should have some progress by next week as I have ordered the spruce for the wings today. In the meantime I am going to get the jig built and finish getting the garage ready for airplane construction. I will get some pictures of the jig and the makeshift shop up soon.

April 16th 2009 Plans Are Ordered

Today I ordered the plans from ACS for the Wittman Tailwind W-10. I am really excited about this as I have wanted to build this plane for several years now. Everything that I have heard about it is that it is a great flying little plane. I am also in the process of preparing the 2 car garage that I will be building the Tailwind in. My plan for this blog is to be a build record for my project which is not an original idea but one that can be credited to Peter Mather who is also building a Tailwind across the big pond. There will be a couple of firsts here as this will be my first full scale airplane that I have built and my first time blogging as well. I hope you enjoy this and come back often to check on my progress.