I have been working on fuselage. The engine baffles worked well I had a prop issue, key broke and the hub unscrewed flew off and broke the prop. This should not happen with a pusher prop and crank turning in the proper direction. Set the engine aside, ordered pusher prop, and started assembly of the fuselage

youtube engine running

Fuselage pictures......much different than original. Those thick bars are for the upcoming load test of the aft fuselage and boom.

Gosh I hate the load test....Were my assumptions correct, will I have wasted effort and money and time?

Test of the aft fuselage and boom, attached by spar wing attach fittings:

The setup weighted something and to bring up the chains and come-along level I might add 20# to the 212# number which will give the 232# target for 12# ft sq tail gust load.

Really another screw-up, I though from memory the number was 209# but I can fudge as the line above shows.

There was distortion of the wing attach fittings, but probably a fair distance from catastrophic failure,....The distortion was not past the proportional limit and as the last picture shows the fittings came back and there was no permanent distortion.

I will take it as a pass even though I had not expected the distortion of the attach angles, and probably the unit would not have survived the calculated 27 # ft sq which was the stress sizing. That part was difficult to estimate as to how it should be figured given the assembly it is attached to.

There is some question as to how valid this is because of the substantial fixture attached to the aircraft structure, but I am not sure there is any other way at this point in construction.

Rudder Bar, Skid, and Seat Pan are done. Working on Seat Back so I and sit and make airplane noises. (glider noises?)

working on seat back

Been a while since I posted, sorry. All my aileron ribs are done 5.3 lb less weights which weigh 2.1 lb total both wings.

I have another site I post on with more detail should you want. Aluminum Dragon