Upper rail welding done

The fall weather was excellent and Saturday is a day for welding.  This was a to clear an item from the to-do list.  The upper rail joints looked like this one, only partially welded.

My best joint was probably this one, which looks almost respectable.  The others aren't nearly as photogenic.

To-do's before the first flight are now:

1. finish weld the upper rail to the vertical supports
2. do a weight & balance
3. do a very thorough pre-flight check
4. acquire radios (need 1x in car, 1x airborne)

Deferred:

• finish weld trailer frame joints
• wing root kiss seal
• leather patch on wing tips where they rub the ground
• leather patch guides for elevator control lines
• trim color paint
• main strut fairings
• jury strut fairings
  
• emergency parachute
  
• drogue chute
• variometer

 

Mobility!

The entirety of Goat has been mobile for the first time!  The wing were strapped into the trailer with ratchet straps, and the struts and tail were strapped to the cross-beams with Velcro.  The horizontal tail sat atop the upper wing and jammed in-between the wing and flap/ailerons.  

 

The nose section was in the back of the sporty Prius-mobile.

With the tail section 'backwards' to the airflow, the rudder looked a bit wiggly at 45mph.  I'm sure there will be a better placement for each of the components, determined from some trial-and-error.  

The trailer rode reasonably well with the weight of the plywood and the stiffness of fully trussing the structure.  I could probably get away with the current welding, but it would make me feel much better to weld everything completely.

The upper wing mounts could be about 1in higher and still leave ample room.  The 1in square tube isn't quite large enough for the hitch pins to hold securely, so it would be nice to replace them with 1.25in square tube instead, and moving them up at the same time.

To-do's before the first flight are now:

1. take all of Goat for its first trip around the neighborhood 
2. finish weld the upper rail to the vertical supports
3. finish weld all the trailer joints
4. do a weight & balance
5. do a very thorough pre-flight check
6. acquire radios (need 1x in car, 1x airborne)

Deferred:

• wing root kiss seal
• leather patch on wing tips where they rub the ground
• leather patch guides for elevator control lines
• trim color paint
• main strut fairings
• jury strut fairings
  
• emergency parachute
  
• drogue chute
• variometer

A mount for the lower wing, installed

The lower wing mounting system is now installed and a wing panel seems to be reasonably okay on it.  It will need some tweaking over time, but I can move the mounts with a simple 1/4-in drill bit.  It really would be nicer if the ailerons folded flat (my fault, not the drawings)...

This is how the lower mount looks with a wing panel installed in the trailer.

The lower wing panel is well secured by three Velcro straps and is constrained by the cross-braces for the upper wing.

The lower mount bar has a long end for wrapping the strap around.  I made the upper and lower beams interchangeable, hence the extra hole visible.

To-do's before the first flight are now:

1. install lower wing mounts into trailer
2. finish weld the upper rail to the vertical supports
3. finish weld all the trailer joints
4. take all of Goat for its first trip around the neighborhood 
5. do a weight & balance
6. do a very thorough pre-flight check
7. acquire radios (need 1x in car, 1x airborne)

Deferred:

• wing root kiss seal
• leather patch on wing tips where they rub the ground
• leather patch guides for elevator control lines
• trim color paint
• main strut fairings
• jury strut fairings
  
• emergency parachute
  
• drogue chute
• variometer

A mount for the lower wing, parts

 

After a break that included travel to a crazy hot desert, crazy far north, and beautiful Vermont, I had a idea for a mounting system for the lower wing in the trailer.

On a rainy Saturday evening, a quick trip to the giant orange home store for aluminum square tube (oh so expensive) sets me up with some material.

I'm planning to run a long bolt through just the wood deck, so there is no drilling through the aluminum frame.  This is what it'll look like:

I'm ready for daylight to try mounting this to the trailer.

I also made it out to get more Argon for the remaining trailer welding, so that's also in the work queue.

To-do's before the first flight are now:

1. install lower wing mounts into trailer
2. finish weld the upper rail to the vertical supports
3. finish weld the trailer frame joints
4. take all of Goat for its first trip around the neighborhood 
5. do a weight & balance
6. do a very thorough pre-flight check
7. acquire radios (need 1x in car, 1x airborne)

Deferred:

• wing root kiss seal
• leather patch on wing tips where they rub the ground
• leather patch guides for elevator control lines
• trim color paint
• main strut fairings
• jury strut fairings
  
• emergency parachute
  
• drogue chute
• variometer

Some trailing edge wedges

Let's glue together some trailing edge wedges together toward creating a fairing for the aft strut.

Several years ago, I made a small section of the fairing and covered it with fabric.  It holds up reasonably well, but fiberglass will be more rigid than the fabric.  This is the staring point.

 

It took a few hours to clean up the pile of trailing edge foam pieces with a sharp x-acto and a sanding block.  There is nothing like the accomplishment completing a pile of monotony. The effort was to remove the little bridges and other nibs so they could be glued together in sections.

I decided to make the trailing edge in 18in sections.  These will eventually be covered with lightweight spackle, sanded smooth, and glassed.

The thought occurred to me that making a thin-walled fiberglass tube over a section of scrap aluminum would allow sliding a fairing section over the strut.  That thin tube would also give a bonding surface for the leading edge pieces, so the whole fairing could be an add-on part.  This sounds like more work.  We'll see.

In case you're counting, it took about 136 individual trailing edge wedges for the aft strut.  I'll do a final count later.  Multiply this by two for the leading edge of the aft strut, then multiply by two for the opposite side, then multiply this by two for the forward strut.  That'll be around 1000 individual pieces of foam.  I hope this is worth the effort! 

A bunch of foam

It was way too humid, hot, and sunny to work in the backyard on trailering the wings.  So, I cut a whole bunch of foam pieces on the CNC toward making main strut fairings.  Leading edges and trailing edges are cut similarly, and a whoooole bunch of them from one sheet of 1in thick foam.  The struts are around 12ft each.

 It's too hot in the garage, so that's all for today.

Second coat

Not much to show of a second coat of paint.  It's more consistently gray.

A good friend looked at the nose release and called it functional.  The conversation quickly zeroed in on if there was a more secure way to hold the release pin than the two hair-ties.  This may be a case of perfection is the enemy of good enough, however.  It works.

Summer weather of extreme heat, humidity, and direct sun has arrived in force.  To hide from the heat, I'm taking a second look at the strut fairings.  These aren't required for the first flight, so consider that I could be stalling a bit.  No pictures today.

To-do's before the first flight are now:

1. figure out how all of the Goat parts transport together -- lower wing, horizontal tail
2. take all of Goat for its first trip around the neighborhood 
3. finish weld the upper rail to the vertical supports -- need Argon
4. finish weld the frame joints -- need Argon
5. do a very thorough pre-flight check
6. do a weight & balance
7. get radios -- need 1x airborne, 1x in car

Deferred until after the first-flight:

• leather patch on wing tips where they rub the ground
• leather patch guides for elevator control lines
• trim color paint
• wing root kiss seal
• main strut fairings
• jury strut fairings
  
• emergency parachute
  
• drogue chute
• variometer