Hi Tripp,
I had to down-tools for Christmas and have been very busy with other work since then. I aim to get back to working on my All-Carbon Dragon before the end of February.
I have fabricated all the internal ribs (wings, tail/rudder, H-stab/elevator, & tail boom) and managed to pull both halves of the tail boom from their mold just before Christmas (see the pics and videos on my project page.) My next task is to assemble the tail boom and get that major part finished. After that I plan to mold the various leading edges (wings, tail, H-stab), followed by the main wing spars before assembling the wings.
One of the reasons progress is a little slow (apart from work and other interruptions!) is that I am making significant modifications to the original design - each of which requires a fair amount of thought, design and load computation! The major changes in my CD are:
- I am building a 3-part wing,
- A removable tail/rudder (from the tail boom)
- A removable tail boom (from the pilot pod.)
- Cutting my main wing leading edges at 45deg from the root rib, either side of the pilot's head, to give the pilot a much wider field of view. The cutaway sections of LE will be skinned with 0.5mm clear polycarbonate plastic (the same as the pod canopy.)
- Replacing the delta-shaped spoiler with proper Hirth-Schempp air brakes
- I also plan to totally redesign the structure of the pilot pod... though I will be building the initial version of the pod more or less to the original specifications to get this beast into the air as soon as possible - refinements/redesign will come later!
I can't wait to get back into the workshop - I was really on a roll before Christmas!
All the best,
Phil.