Narfi's Life after EU: Chapter Five - CH750-SD 3 Place Aircraft

Discussion in 'Life, the Universe and Everything' started by narfi, Sep 5, 2020.

  1. Jamira

    Jamira Samurai Girl

    Looks professional! I think I would enter your airplane without concern once it'll be able to fly.

    I run way smaller parts for a 1:10 scaled model of our Do X. We will get a worktop soon with notches for positioning the parts for the assembly. And I printed a small fixing tool with excenter for it as one piece. It needs a short "knack!" and works pretty good.
    upload_2021-3-30_0-46-35.png
    I am still excited about all the things that are possible today.
     
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  2. narfi

    narfi Lost

    That is an alignment tool for securing or 'jigging' the part to the table?
     
  3. Jamira

    Jamira Samurai Girl

    For positioning and fixig parts. Here is bulkhead 46:
    upload_2021-4-2_20-42-41.png
    It is 540 mm high and has more than 20 small printed parts.
    upload_2021-4-2_20-44-40.png
     
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  4. narfi

    narfi Lost

    I like it!
     
  5. Jamira

    Jamira Samurai Girl

    I made an improved version meanwhile:
    upload_2021-4-2_22-17-15.png
    It should solve an issue with the T-notch crossings. But best part is: It is all printed at one go. Just a small "knack, knack!" after printing and it works. At least hopefully it will! Have to test it tomorrow.

    So ... let me know if you need special tools ;-)
     
    Last edited: Apr 2, 2021
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  6. narfi

    narfi Lost

    ~4.5hrs
    Cut the strips, debuted the edges and bent the spars and doublers for the horizontal and elevator last night.
    It's an old brake at a neighbors I am using and it used the full 10ft of it, bending sharper at one end and bowing a little in the middle creaking and groaning the whole time on the .040. I got the angles closeish and will finish them with the hand seamer like I did with the rudder spar. It's close and the bends are straight and where I want them so shouldn't be to hard to finish them off.

    Once I have them bent to my satisfaction I will tweak the rib dimensions Roger gave me to match perfectly to the spars and build the new formers and cutting blocks for them.

    20210408_213826.jpg


    Total time spent building: 102 hours
    Total Cost: $8803
    Airplane + consumables + project specific costs: $5867
    Tools, etc.. I will keep for future projects: $2936
     
  7. narfi you're really the best, you leave all the shizn behind and craft your own stuffs. i can imagine you building rockets and flying to mars soon™.

    well, sooner than u-know-who for sure :bigsmile:
     
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  8. narfi

    narfi Lost

    One of my heroes was an aircraft designer/builder who somewhat pioneered a period of the homebuilt aircraft scene with plans he sold. He went on and did design and build his own space ships before retiring. His success drove the current era towards what they are doing and striving towards now. In retirement, he designs and builds his own planes again.....
    If you have some time, it is well worth going down the rabbit hole on all that Burt Rutan had a hand in during his carrier.

    I am not on that Scale(extra points if you can understand the pun), but even as a private guy, it is fun to have good roll models to try to learn different things from.
     
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  9. narfi

    narfi Lost

    ~9hrs

    Spent an hour Friday working the angles on the spars and doublers.
    About 8 hours Sunday afternoon building forming and cutting blocks for the horizontal ribs, cutting them out and forming them.
    The first time around when I thought I was building the 750stol ribs I built 3 form blocks, one for the leading edge, one for the middle and one for the full ribs, this time I just made the one full sized former and used my hand seamer to bend the hidden flange on the nose and middle ribs. I still made 3 sets of cutting templates to run the router around for cutting the aluminum.
    Of course after forming the ribs I had to dummy them up to the spars to get a peak at how they will look :)

    20210411_191143.jpg

    20210411_211806.jpg

    Roger is gone to Sun n Fun, so I won't be able to get dimensions on the center hinge assembly parts or rib spacing or attach brackets until he is back next week. Spacing seems most critical on the center two ribs as the forward attach brackets match up with them and from what I can tell need to be spaced appropriately to match the fuselage width and fuselage side of the attach brackets for bolting on. (and I obviously haven't built the fuselage yet....)

    I have seen some people build increase the size of the outer hinge bracket to form a strake on the outer ribs of the horizontal. Any thoughts on if I should do that here? I am strongly leaning towards yes. I like the looks of it. It probably does help some. I intend to build floats for it at some time, and although I have not read anything yet about float characteristics for it, nearly all certified aircraft I have put floats on require more stability back at the tail. For example Cessna has a larger rudder and a dorsal fin bolted on under the tail and beavers have a plate bolted on the outer edge of the horizontal stabilizers looking almost exactly like larger versions of what I have seen done on zeniths. What do you guys think?

    Also ordered the elevator trim system from Aircraft Spruce, It includes the Servo, clevis/pushrod kit, as well as switches and indicators. $372

    Total time spent building: 111 hours
    Total Cost: $9175
    Airplane + consumables + project specific costs: $6239
    Tools, etc.. I will keep for future projects: $2936
     
    Last edited: Apr 12, 2021
  10. Wistrel

    Wistrel Kick Ass Elf

    Still following along here. Indeed as Jamira says on faith in the build, but I think the reason is when a person makes their own thing, if they are of the right careful mindset, they do it right. No time or cost cutting, if you do that, you only cheat yourself because you do it for the love of making something you are proud of.
     
  11. narfi

    narfi Lost

    Should be back to working on the plane soonish..... We fell down a rabbit hole and almost to the end of it :)

    Having never sailed, or even been close to sailboats to see them in operation, we decided to turn the canoe we built a few years ago into a sailing trimaran. The project goal was that the canoe could bolt on and off completely independent of the sailing rig. We designed the outriggers, beams, mast, boom, etc... ourselves without plans and purchased a used 420 class dinghy sail off of eBay for it. That took us most of the summer but its done now and we have had it sailing 3 times so far, and it has been lots of fun!

    Still small tweaks to do on the rudder system, but everything else is working great and it goes upwind very well. We are very happy with it. (esp for not knowing what we were doing :) )

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  12. narfi

    narfi Lost

    A few interesting pictures from the build,

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  13. narfi

    narfi Lost

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  14. narfi

    narfi Lost

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  15. Jamira

    Jamira Samurai Girl

    You are so crazy! An outstanding crafter. I love all your ideas and projects. I'm afraid you will start to build your own spaceship one day and leave us alone to settle down on Mars.
     
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  16. Wistrel

    Wistrel Kick Ass Elf

    Just caught up! Even your rabbit hole side projects put my main projects to shame... I'm on a good 2 to 3 levels of main project distraction into side projects. Doesn't help that people keep giving me new toys...
     
    • Agree Agree x 1
  17. Jamira

    Jamira Samurai Girl

    Got Microsoft Flightsimulator lately. And one of my first targets was - ofc - your small airport. It is impressive in VR! Dunno how good Microsofts modelling is, especially for areas so far away in the North. I think it's just generated by procedural algorithms from air photographs. Alas, I was lucky to be able to visit your place this way. Since I used a waterplane I could land at the lake too. The reason for that purchase was our Do X-project. Probably you know the historic photo of the Do X above the Hudson River 1931 close to the Statue of Liberty?
    upload_2021-9-6_3-38-58.png
    Our model isn't that good. Just a work in progress. But I got a halfway good screenshot from the Flight Simulator 90 years later:
    upload_2021-9-6_3-41-16.png
     
    Last edited: Sep 6, 2021
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  18. narfi

    narfi Lost

    Beautiful picture, it looks so realistic!
     
  19. narfi

    narfi Lost

    Sailed, modified, broke, and repaired the sailboat a while. Evenings are getting cooler so Wednesday night I sanded all the epoxy drips off the work table and dug out some zenith parts.


    Last night laid out some steel tube for straight support jigs. (Table is on dirt and uneven after a few freeze thaw melt mud cycles) good practice to have some straight steel tubes or beams to clamp to anyways.

    Clamp the horizontal stabilizer spars and ribs in place and started going through all my old emails with Roger for dimensions. Drilled pilot holes for the center three ribs and clecoed in place. Need to find or make the angle tab for the outer ones and get them clecoed in place.

    Thinking about the skin. .020 with a 1 1/4" radius leading edge. The pipe I had used for vacume forming the rudder isn't long enough for this 10ft long skin. Will need to find a longer pipe which may start getting too flexible or figure out a different method.

    20210909_203137.jpg

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  20. narfi

    narfi Lost

    Squirrel!!!!!

    What do you see?

    20211212_144624.jpg

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