Monday, June 6, 2011

Made some progress today. Got my turtle deck bow formed and welded on. Also the gauge bow. I then made copies of the two to use for my canopy and mocked them up. Got the side rails of the canopy drilled and notched out for the latch system. 

Used an old cast iron skillet bolted to the work top. Worked so well!! I am using 3/8' x .035 so not real difficult to bend, but very happy with the results for such a low-buck idea.

Turtle deck bow welded up, pic shows rear canopy bow in progress. I was happy that I was able to get these bent and shaped almost identical. Same for the gauge bow and front canopy bow. 

Here is the start of my lowered custom butt pan. Will, or plan is to get another couple inches of "sink' into the airplane. I know it will work, as I sat in the plane without the wood pan. 
Using some foam spray, inside a 99cent paint tray. I split the tray, and dropped it down in on either side of the control tube below. After a few hours to dry and set, I find out that the top is nice and dense .. the foam in the bottom is wet, and super thinned out ... no air! Might have to do this in layers, or bite the bullet and buy some real filler material to use. Plan is to make this mold, then sand away to get my shape. Then I will make a  fiberglass pan over the mold and walla! .. new, lower seat pan with a comfy contour. 

All four bows in place. The T-deck and gauge bow are welded in, and I am mocking up the canopy. Got my side rails sitting in there, and they are notched out ready for the latching set-up


Getting late, but I wanted to play with mocking up the stringers. I lower stringers on each side only go to station 5, or about half way to the tail. Notice the left of the bottom pic .. I top stringers per plans attach to the vertical stab uprights .. but that makes the tail look "chubby" to me. I want to draw them in a bit, and the short string tying' two togethor in the back is my attempt at getting a preview of what the covered fuse will look like with the stringers set in about 1/4" or more. 


1 comment:

  1. This aircraft has been sold .. been a tough year!

    I plan on building another S1, and will have a site to support that soon.

    Jason

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