Cabane happiness

It's growing slowly but surely.

The nose section now has cabanes with all the pieces attached! I added the compression struts to the back of the cabanes using some long rivets and two 1/16" washers. It took a bit of filing to fishmouth the tubes to match both angles and fit to the correct depth. Sort of glad that I'm bolting rather than welding.

A bike trainer stand does a great job of keeping the nose section standing upright while I'm working on it.

The central cabane intersection in progress. The main plate has the proper bolts and associated hardware. The forward cabane strut has the insert and is happily riveted. The aft strut is what needs work next. By the plans, it is about 1/4" shorter than I'd like to see. I have an extra piece of 3/4" x .035" tube that I'll cut long for this replacement piece. I also need to do the insert for it and then all the riveting. I'm out of rivets again.

Yeah I'm out of washers too... 200 washers last time wasn't enough!
I worked a tad on the kingpost too, despite that I can't assemble it on the aircraft inside! I haven't cut the large holes in it to pass through the cable connections.

I have not yet bought the tubes that go over these inner structural piece. I still need to get a vice so I can ovalize the outer housings. I think it will look better with the ovalized tubes dressing up the structural pieces.

So next I'm going to work on the tail ribs back down in North Carolina before coming back to the nose section. I'll then order the rivets, washers, and materials to make the vertical fin (aft fuselage, tail section, whatever you want to call it) so that the nose and tail are connected! That'll be four or five months from now though :-)

Summer cabane

Time has come for another post. Life is changing ... a semester away from moving, a year away from graduating (yet again), a full 20 days until getting married. But Goat still progresses at its own pace.

Just this week, I received an order for a red Nelson Booster seat. It is a tad smaller than I anticipated, so the fit isn't quite exactly right, but the idea is there. I can always make a custom one that fits later when I care, heh. I laced the seat bottom and back with 3mm utility cord from REI. It's in the climbing isles and boasts 400lb strength, so I figure it should hold my butt up just fine. I painstakingly cut and tied each side with one tube removed such that when I pushed it back into place and dropped the bolt in, all the lines are tight. That sucked. The seat back was easier because I could slide the completed web down until it was snug, but getting the spacing right took several tries. I still have yet to cement the loops in place using some ShoeGoo. The seat itself will eventually be laced onto the cord instead of using a temporary loop around the seat back. I must say, it's pretty comfortable. It's no Tempurpedic, but works for me :-)

Also I have been working on getting the cabanes installed. This meant making the temporary center section pieces include ribs connecting the leading and trailing edges. Quite simply, I could not have purchased enough washers. There is a lot of spacing distance to cover to center the ribs, but whatever, washers are cheap. Next time I'll get 2000 instead of just 200. That should cover me :-)

Anyhow, I put the new long $7 ea. AN-42B eye bolts through the spar LE and TE to make the attachment point to the cabanes. A temporary short bolt and then a few pieces of 4-40 steel rod snaked through the test holes and now the cabanes are up by themselves! The nose tube goes up and supports the front of the cabanes just as nicely as can be. I even spent this morning on the forward pieces of the cabanes, so my head actually fits up inside closed structure (okay, I'm short so not actually inside, but it's nearby). This now is the configuration that it will be for flight. Everything else goes behind me (tail, aft fuse, wings). The wings have cables that tie into the tip of the nose, so I suppose those are ahead of me, but that's splitting hairs. The seating arrangement now is fairly close to the flight configuration.

I also bought a new nose section keel piece. This will replace the one with several kinks in the upper radius. I talked with an A&P guy who suggested filling the tube with sand and using a forming jig (which I can make from plywood). I'm hoping this new part will dress up the nose to look a little more professional. I also purchased a length of 3/4" OD tubing to replace a yet-undecided pair of truss members. Nobody likes the crimped 6061-T6, but if I can figure out which crimp everyone hates and make that look reasonable, perhaps they'll stop complaining.

I also need to figure out where to buy plastic tube end inserts like you might find in lawn furniture. You know what I'm talking about, a little plastic black cap that slides into a tube and dresses up the end to prevent snags on the thin wall and make it look solid. Where can I buy 3/4" and 1" ones of those?

Oh I guess I should also mention that I bought a handful of AN-14A bolts that fit better in the cabanes to get rid of the super long ones. Between making these updates and switching out the low-profile nuts for regular ones, the cabanes are looking rather dressed up.

What's next?

I still have some finishing-out work for the cabanes and replacements on the nose, so that's the immediate plan. After that, I'll be back on campus close to the tail sections again. I'll likely work on the ribs for the rudder and the horizontal stab. Figuring out and finishing those out will be a good accomplishment and set me up for the ailerons/flaps later down the road. I'll also take the sheet stock and start cutting out parts for the wing. I don't have all that many little parts to do, so I fear this will go fast enough I'll want to buy tubes again. My next tubing order I want to be the wing spars and tail tubes. This is all that's left for an easy next-step. I take that back, I guess the vertical tail (aka aft fuselage) is only an 8-ft tube, so UPS won't destroy me too badly. That settles it, I'll finish up the tail feathers then order the aft fuselage tubes. That will keep me busy for a while. I can even go so far as doing the elevator and rudder control rigging after attaching to the fuselage. That will be awesome. Yay for something to look forward to!