It's riveting work .......

The Simpsons was back on tonight! I broke into that Christmas order a bit early ... I split a tube to make sleeves for the upper and lower vertical stabilizer tubes. Since the long tubes have inserts with rivets, I thought that would be a fun way to spend the evening. I have to get to DC to do the rest of the alignment before making holes in the others ends ... something about alignment, heh. I also have another half-dozen brackets to make before I do that alignment step. Good thing the Thanksgiving holiday is upcoming :-)

Car-Tow

I'm starting to feel better about this whole car-launching thing. Here is a picture of an Australian powered Goat on an engine-off flight. From what I can tell, it is essentially tying a rope to the car bumper and attaching that to the tow-bridle of Goat. I read that for a short field, it is proper to have a ground pulley that turns the car to face the glider. This way, the driver can better see the aircraft on launch too. Of course, the driver does not drive directly at the aircraft. Also, I find a slight issue that the glider needs to have a very good sense of where the turn-around is located so the glider doesn't get pulled down. In the desert areas, the pulley isn't used and the vehicle simply drives along a road as far as the glider pilot wants, getting better altitude than if a pulley was used. Still, it sounds pretty cool since I don't know anyone in the DC area yet with a tow plane; suggestions are welcome!

Christmas order

If anyone is still reading, I just put in an order for the aft fuselage (tailboom?) section as an impulse. I had the order prepped sometime over the summer, just didn't have the guts to hit the "order" button. Despite having two other active RC airplane projects going on and the school semester wrapping up, I figure having the raw material makes getting back working on Goat more accessible when I finally get the time again. Yay!

In particular, I'll be receiving material for the vertical tail triangle and lower boom support such that I can join the tail feathers to the fuselage. I'll have material for the anti-twist bracing, as well as picking up several spare parts to finish off specific areas of the nose section. A bucket of rivets will let me finalize the cabanes too. I suppose I probably could have done work on the tail ribs, but aluminum work is more satisfying to me right now.

'least I got this out of the way before Christmas hits and I feel that pinch!

PS: I just found a plastic part company that has free samples ... so we'll see if I can get the end caps on sample!