Work Session 9/3/2011

This being the first Saturday of the month, the Bear Creek Skunk Works welcomed a number of visitors from EAA chapter 11114, who were all impressed by the progress being made. We focused today on continued shaping of the foam wing fairings, as well as the fabrication of the ailerons.

While the ailerons appear quite simple, consisting of a pre-folded sheet of aluminum riveted onto a single long chromoly torque tube, as Joel McLaughlin and JP Bernoux learned, lining up a row of 100+ drilled holes was not a simple task. Drilling into chromoly required not only precision, but also muscle power. The result however was a long aileron skin, now clecoed to the torque tube, with only a tiny amount of irregularities, as the images below show.















Measure twice, drill once - JP checks alignment of clecos.














Drilling into 4130 chromoly steel requires precision, and muscles. Here Joel McLaughlin holds aileron skin securely while JP Bernoux drills into torque tube, over 200 times!


















The result is a neat line of clecos. The skins are nearly ready to be riveted.

Below: Eagles Landing owner Pat Hayes departs in his lovely Rotax-powered Dimona motorglider.