Alright!  Congratulations!  A man, his wife and his plane.  Now, just add in some little airplane building helpers and a dog to keep your feet warm and you'll have the complete picture!  I'm sure you two will have a wonderful journey ahead of you.

God bless.

Mike Howe

  Congrates on the new wife. I haven't been following this thread, but should. Understand that with a wood airframe most problems can be fixed without drastic measures. At one point you mentioned the crossmembers in the cockpit area popping loose. They will when you pul the front together unless you leave that area clamped together. We used some blocks and bar clamps this way we could slide the bottom sheeting in place after the front was pulled together without removing the clamps.
Keep it light, don't over build, and don't deviate from the plans. It will perform and fly like it should. Best of luck and have fun.
  Larry

Quoted from Knut A

But in the background...I can se a man carrying a spar...!! Ari...you don't bring with you your MiniMax-project to the church....do you..???
Knut A

LOL!!  It DOES look like a guy carrying a spar, doesn't it?

Hi Ari and Irene;
Congratulations to the both of you. May your life together be full of wonderful things, and some little things, LOL.
My wife and I have been married for 44 years, we met in first grade. I would not trade a minute of it.
I wish you both all the happiness and good health in the world.
Sincerely, Bob

Ari and Irene:

Thanks for sharing those happy moments.
Congratulations to both of you, I wish you the best and I hope you'll have a beautiful and happy family in the future.
Ricardo

Guys, thank you so much for your wishes! I feel like I've known you forever, and being able to share this very special moment with such wonderful friends makes it even more special.

Re man carrying a spar. He is holding one pole of the Chuppah. I briefly considered making them out of RS wood, but decided against it. Some chuppahs are very elaborate, but we made ours simple and modest. This works for me in spiritual life as well as in airplane building, so in that sense I did bring the airplane with me :=)

Ari.

Has anyone heard from Iter? Hopefully he is just away on his honeymoon, just hope all is well with him.

Shhhhhh...
Don't disturb them yet ....let Irene have him for herself for a while. Don't remind them about T88, spars, ribs, CAD and so on yet. He may be stressed, and we all knew what can happen then....!
Knut A

Update please Ari, this post has 7,825 hits. thats got to be a record.

Hi,

Re the "Photo of the Moment" which is on right now, I would swear that this is a picture of Jim Chuk's runway....!

Gene

I don't kinow Gene,  I see a red Airbike with a nosewheel........   You should see the runway right now in real life.  It got 13" on snow on it last night.  I put the skis on the plane and hope to use them tomorrow.   Actually the photo of the moment is kind of neat, it's supriseing how often I see one of my pics there.  Jim Chuk  

That must be some honny moon they went on...

Hi everyone, sorry to keep the suspence up like that. We are stranded on the Pacific island of Maui and don't expect to get rescued until next week. As long as I'm writing here, I want to thank Dennis. I received your metal part just before we left and it looked great! I'll post photos of it when we get back. Thank yo so much!

People have asked me for my DXF files. I'll come up with an orderly way to distribute them when I get back. If you have a /burning/ need for them, let me know.

Also, I don't think anyone from HI is on this board, but if you are, it would be cool to meet in real life.

Ari.

Hours today: 4
Running total: 236

Back to square 218

I haven't touched the project in 2.5 months, in large part because I was stuck with the motor mount at an odd angle to fuselage sides. I finally decided to bite the bullet and redo the front end. I am grateful to all who gave encouragement and advice in this thread--http://www.lonesomebuzzards.com/cgi-bin/forum/Blah.pl?m-1199673789/s-0/. Using a heat gun, I pulled the joints, cleaned up the epoxy left on surfaces and glued back the joints that delaminated (I posted photos of the damage in the other thread). When the glue dries tomorrow, I'll be back to where I was in early November, but wiser hopefully.

Ari.

Iter: I see You Have repaired the delaminations on the mount. If you ever need to you can use a litttle low pressure air from a compressor to blow the glue up in the crack if you can't put it in with a blade. Works well. Charlie

Hours today: 4
Running total: 240

2.5 months and over $100 worth of bar clamps later, I think I have a square nose drying in the shop. The manual says, "A couple of crank-up bar clamps will hold sides together while the glue cures."  For sure. There are 11 clamps in this picture, including 3, 36" ones that hold the middle section together--I had two more cross-member pop out again before I broke down and bought the long clamps. I'm going to follow Randy's advice and keep the clamps there until I'm done gluing in the bottom plywood.

Ari.

Ari, there is truth to the saying 'one never has enough clamps'.

Hours today: 1.5
Running total: 241.5

It looks like the frame cured straight this time and I'm ready to glue in the bottom plywood. When I was gluing up the sides, I could not believe how much epoxy the mahogany plywood soaked up. So this time I traced the frame's outline on plywood and painted it with epoxy. I'll let it sit for a couple of hours and then glue the sheet in place.

I also followed George's advice and rounded sharp edges in the bottom longeron. Thanks George!

Ari.

I'm at this stage in my rebuild myself. I guess I don't understand why you would want to paint the area and then let it set a few hours before gluing the sheet in place. My plan is to paint both the sheet and the frame with a liberal amount of epoxy and staple in place after letting the two parts sit for a short time. This way if the sheet soaks up to much I can add more epoxy if need be before I join the two.

BTW, Good Job! Nice and square!

Hours tonight: 1.5
Running total: 243

Glued & stapled the bottom sheet in place. This turned out to be harder than I expected, and I'm worried about the seam's quality.

The plywood wanted to stay away from the frame in a great many places, and where it wanted to separate, staples didn't hold it. I ended up using small nails in a few places. I had my wife shine a flashlight inside the fuselage which made gaps in the seam visible. I guess I'll know tomorrow if I closed them well enough.

Quoted Text

I guess I don't understand why you would want to paint the area and then let it set a few hours

My idea was that by then epoxy would gel enough to stop soaking into plywood, but not enough to make bonding with fresh epoxy difficult.

Ari.

Ari,
Found a picture of how I held mine.

Randy, your photos are great! Now if you could post them one step ahead of where I'm currently at instead of one step behind... :=)

Ari.

Let me know what your doing next

I'm waiting for epoxy to cure on the bottom skin (it's fairly cold here at the moment so I'm giving it extra time). Assuming that the bottom skin stuck, or after I fix whatever deficiencies in the glueline , I'll close the tail end and start putting in diagonals and cross-braces.

Ari.

First 5hrs. need to be at least 50 degrees for a proper cure. That came from Larry Isreal. probably works better. Charlie

Also on 1/8th sheeting staples should be at least 3/8th to 7/16th. some folks try to use 1/4. just not enough IMO! Charlie

No special tricks here just make sure things are straight and square.  The book ends used for the front will help with this.  I used a lot of T-88 building this section.

Randy, did you have and problems bending the longerons to create the straight sections aft of station 5? I was surprised by how much force it took to bend the front, I hope the back will be easier.

Ari.

Iter: He has a straight edge screwed to the table holding it straight. that's what I did or it would have been crooked. I guess one side was easier to bend than the other. wood properties I guess. charlie

There is a strait edge screwed to the table on both sides ( can't see the one on the far side).  The back, as I remember, bends a lot easier than the front, but make sure the top(bottom) longerons follow at the same bend.  Somehow I wound up with them not the same when looking down on the fuse, so I had to cut the top (bottom) loose and re-glue.  This step will be a lot easier if you have a second set of hands, one to bend and measure and one set to screw and clamp.  (By that I mean screw blocks to the table, newlyweds)