dle's Oz Build

[David47]

Another productive weekend. The weathers starting to get colder here in the southern parts of Australia so we all rug up like Penguins ... I'm still bonding some remaining ribs onto the elevator and started on the fixed fin ribs. Not sure if I've messed up here but the lowermost ribs shown in the manual show two seperate ribs. I think I've sorted it by cutting one of the ribs in two and bonding the sections either side of the t/wheel forward bolt attach point. My concern is that the outside profile of the forward rib is inside the adjacent tube. This doesn't look right to me as when the fabric is wrapped in this area, there'll be a weird crease. The photo shows what I mean. I can fix this by bonding some spare rib stiffener sections either side to get a cleaner fabric line. Anyone come across this before or is it just me ... ?

Set the low fuel warning system tank and hardware in place and lock wired the lowermost fuselage tube in position. Rough cut the seat pans and cut the harness slots. Think I'll put an edging on these as they'll abrade the seat belt material.

Fitted up the rudder f/glass LE and trimmed so that the aft edges fair into the recessed section of the ribs. It all seemed to come together well, with a minimum of gap between the rib LE and the glass LE. Slots for the hinge points aren't cut at this stage. Did the same for the fixed fin glass TE and cut the slots for the rod end hinge points. Probably got a bit over excited using the Dremel and cut the slots a little more than needed, so I'll fill with my now favourite adhesive, Hysol 4960 !. I've included a photo of my over exuberance so that others that come later don't repeat the same mistake (Lowermost cutout shown as its the worst ... I should have just cut enough for the rod end hinge and the rudder stop arms). A question that comes out of this though is the gap between the rudder LE and the fin TE fairings. I'm guessing about 1/8" is quite possible without too much trouble - wouldn't want any less - but typically what are other folks setting this at ?. I'm sure I've seen this discussion elsewhere, just can't recall on who's thread it was.

Other than the Dremel sage and couple of other transgressions, progress is happening without too much drama - so far ....