Work Session 9/24/2011

This past week, the primary focus was constructing a set of sturdy shelves to hold all the airplane parts, engines, tools and materials that the Skunk Works is rapidly acquiring. Joel McLaughlin designed the shelves and led the effort over several long, strenuous days. On 9/24/2011 the final nails were sunk and we were able to start moving some of the material.

In addition, the final composite work was completed on the wings, so that covering can begin on Saturday, October 1st.


















Joel "The Laird" McLaughlin led the design and construction of our shelves.














Mike McCann masterfully notched the vertical supports.


















Terry and Joel erect the vertical supports.














Terry's lift was an essential "bad boy" tool in the construction.














Terry and Joel celebrate the "topping out", placing the last beams on the structure.















Tim Misegades, Terry Gardner, Andy Thomson, Bruce Edwards and Michael Payne celebrate the end of construction.


















Michael, Terry and Bruce start to fill the shelves with airplane parts and tools.














The left wing emerges from the upstairs loft for final work.


















Tom Hall sands the wingtip fairing.














Andy Thomson compares the fairings on both wings.














Chapter composite expert Bruce Edwards and Michael Payne admire their work.














Skunk Work members covered the final tail surface earlier last week.


















Konrad Schoen disassembled our Delco starter - yuk!

Below: yep, it needs to be rebuilt! Konrad is handling this.

Work Session 9/17/2011

Let the covering begin!

A large number of people attended our first PolyFiber covering session at the Bear Creek Skunk Works today.

Thanks to EAA1114 Technical Counselor Jack Phillips for his expert guidance as we began covering the tail surfaces of the Skycoupe. Thanks also to Jim Cronin for providing us with a delicious lunch!

Special mention must be made to the nice folks at PolyFiber and Marvel-Schebler who are sponsoring this effort, to our aircraft's designer, Ray Stits, for his interest and advice, and to Jerry Stadtmiller of BIPE Inc. whose excellent workshop last week at the Triple Tree Aerodrome Fly-In prepared our team for this latest stage in our work.

If our covering work continues as it began today, we'll have one fine-looking airplanes when we're done.

The pictures below show all we accomplished today. We'll meet again tomorrow afternoon to continue covering work.













Konrad Schoen and Tom Hall apply pink PolyBrush to the horizontal stab.


















Joel McLaughlin marks the dacron fabric prior to cutting.













Michael Payne learns from the composites expert, Cozy builder Bruce Edwards.


















Shop Meister Terry Gardner proudly displays our first covered component - turned out great!













Composites expert Bruce Edwards describes techniques to Michael Payne and Andy Thomson.


















Andy Thomson applies epoxy to glass while Skip Smoak holds the wing steady.













Claude Burkhead, Burke, and Skip enjoy one of Jim Zazas' amazing aviation tales.


















Sam Allen irons the fabric under the watchful eye of TC Jack Phillips, whose experience at fabric covering was invaluable to our efforts.













Jack inspects our work as Jim Dukeman, Jim Zazas, Terry Gardner and Hari Gopalan listen closely.


















Konrad removes excess fabric from the trim tab.













Konrad Schoen, Tom Hall and Sam Allen appear pleased with their work.













Jim Cronin served as chief cook and bottle washer for our group of hungry builders.


















A shot of the covering effort from the wing loft.













Joel uses the iron to shrink the fabric, a truly magical moment in covering as all watch the wrinkles disappear.













The parking lot was full at the Bear Creek Skunkworks!

Below: Jack demonstrates proper ironing techniques. Hope our wives don't get any ideas that we can do the same on our shirts!

Work Session 9/15/2011

This report summarizes work performed on 9/12-15/2011, since work was performed each day this past week in order to be ready to begin covering the RH wing this Saturday afternoon.

What we've done in the past week:

1. Half of our team attended Jerry Stadtmiller's fabric covering workshop at Triple Tree on 9/10/2011. The general consensus was that this was a very worthwhile experience. The gold standard is now his work and when deliberating fabric-related work one asks WWJD - What Would Jerry Do ?
2. Thanks to Chuck Borsuk, Jim Cronin and JP Bernoux, we now own a BD-4 project. A large collection of material, fasteners, and some VERY nice tools are now owned by the BCAC. We're making an inventory and will eventually store everything at the Skunk Works for potential work on this airplane a later date.
3. All foam shaping on the RH wing is complete and the fairings have a single layer of BID fiberglass.
4. A few more components are needed prior to finishing the LH wing, for instance the pitot tube.
5. At the strong recommendation of our TC Jack Phillips, we decided not to pursue lighting for the Skycoupe at this time. This adds complexity, cost and weight that most feel does not justify the occasional use of the aircraft at night. Conduits for navigation light wiring has however been secured in the wings in case we choose to do this at a later time.

The images below show some of our work in the past few days.

The next work session is Saturday, 9/17/2011 after the chapter meeting when we'll begin covering the RH wing and empennage.














RH wing inboard fairing, cured filler ready for sanding.














RH wing inboard fairing, cured filler ready for sanding.


















Sandy Andy Thomson works on outboard fairing, sand, sand, sand














Ain't she pretty? Inboard fairing ready for fiberglass.














Ain't she pretty? Outboard fairing ready for fiberglass.














Inboard fairing covered with a single layer of bidirectional (BID) glass. We managed to use a single piece despite the curvature - no seams !














Outboard fairing covered with fiberglass.














Four Scuffers Scuffing, three glassers glassing, and a partridge in a pear tree!
Konrad, Andy, Nathan and Mike scuff the wooden surfaces in preparation for the final spraying of two-component epoxy varnish.


















Mike McCann cleans a nice carpenter's square ruler, one of many tools that came with the BD-4 project.


















Skunk Workers looking for booty - in the parts that came with the BD-4 project. Looked like kids in a toy shop!

Below - Tucker, the flamingo-chewing wonder dog, takes a breather from his attacks on the vacuum cleaner.

Triple Tree Aerodrome Fly-In 2011

All,

Triple Tree was a great experience in many ways, especially for those who attended the fabric covering workshop from Jerry Stadtmiller. You'll find images from Triple Tree here:

EAA1114 Web Site (low-resolution)

Flickr (high-resolution)

Thanks to Terry Gardner, we now have T-Shirts, see the images below of the graphic design and Hari modeling the shirt during Triple Tree. These will be on sale for $15 at the Skunkworks and during chapter meetings. Wear yours with pride, fellow Skunks!

Next work sessions: Tuesday and Thursday, 9/13 & 9/15; Saturday, 9/17 after the EAA1114 meeting. Possibly also Sunday and next weekend too for covering, covering, covering.












Bear Creek Skunk Works Graphics, thanks to Terry's niece.


















Hari shows off the new Tee at Triple Tree.













This Bowers Fly-Baby got a lot of air time at Triple Tree. BCAC member Konrad Schoen has a Fly Baby project.

Below, Bear Creek Skunks with Pat Hartness, developer of the Triple Tree Aerodrome and CEO of packaging machinery giant Hartness International, during the Friday evening steak cookout.

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.

Work Session 9/1/2011

The Bear Creek Aero Club is once again in the news! See this link at General Aviation News. You'll see some familiar faces here. The same article appears in the print version of GA News for August 26th. Copies are in the Bull Shack.

The cooler weather that greeted a large crew of ten Skunk Workers on September 1st resulted in impressive progress. Last Saturday, Terry and a few others reattached the leading edge skins and my do they look nice! Terry has been busy preparing the aileron skins, too, and preparing the engine for tests.

Yesterday, Tom, Clephane, Michael Payne, Nathan McConnell, Jim Cronin, Konrad Schoen, Andy Thomson, JP Bernoux, Terry Gardner, Joel McLaughlin and yours truly worked on the following:

1. Completed rough foam blocks for wingtip fairings. Began contouring.
2. Fabricated wooden false leading edge for wing root fairing foam blocks.
3. Fabricated and mounted wing root support block for aileron strap attachment.
4. Punched holes on aileron sheet for attachment to torque tubes.

See the images below for details.

TOM CLEPHANE HAS UPLOADED A NICE SET OF PICTURES AT THIS LINK.

Our next work session is planned for Saturday, 3 September at 10AM. We'll be opening up the shop to all chapter builders for the First Saturday Shop Visits.

Kent Misegades














The Bear Creek Skunk Works parking lot was filled to capacity on 9/1/2011.















Joel, JP and Terry plan work on the ailerons.



















Joel punching pilot holes in the aileron skins.














Andy fabrictaed two false leading edges for the wing root fairings. This one is taped and ready for use once the foam blocking is in place.


















Michael Payne forms the LH tip fairing.



















Jim Cronin, the human vise, with his RH tip fairing blocks.



















Michael plans for surgery on his foam blocks. Bamboo skewers hold blocks together as the epoxy cures.


















Michael climbed inside the wing to make this curved line, cleverly employing a strip of aluminum as a spline.














Nathan and Newbie Tom Clephane work on wing root blocks that will take the aileron straps.















Jim and Michael rough cut their wingtip blocks. The polystyrene foam came from a craft shop and the remains of two boogie boards.


















Jim about to make the first cut on his block. A long bread knife works well.














JP, Terry and Michael fitting the first foam block in the LH wing tip.

Below: Jim and Konrad hold blocks together as the epoxy cures. They later discovered it bonds well to Konrad's pants!