| After
Sun & Fun last year, I set about making the molds for pre-molded flaperons.
It was an awesome job. Long hours and a lot of physical labor on the upper
molds. Then there was a lot of frustration concerning the lower molds because
I was depending on someone else in a metal fabrication facility and I just
couldn’t seem to get them off dead center. Those molds are actually made
of stainless steel! Once I got them to move on it, the bottoms were made
very quickly and I was able to move on with actually making the parts.
The final product is really
beautiful. We are making the flaperons from carbon fiber. They have a ¼"
foam core in the large flat areas and this results in ripple free surfaces.
I designed in uni directional carbon longitudinally for rigidity and they
are REALLY strong. They come with the top and the bottom bonded together
and the counterbalance lead weight is installed in the leading edges. The
builder will cut the slots for the hinges and install the hinges and the
end plates.
Based on these new flaperons,
we have developed |
a
new procedure for assembling the wings. The flaperons are used to fit the
upper wing skin to the lower wing skin. By placing the flaperon in position
aft of the wing at the right times while it is being assembled, the curvature
of the wing can be made to conform to the curvature of the flaperon. In
this way, the mating of the two is very accurate and that simplifies the
filleting and finish work. We are assembling wings on a constant and ongoing
basis here in Dallas now, and this new arrangement is really much nicer
and faster and the outcome is much more predictable and consistent.
All the wings are the exact same shape and all the flaps and wings match
each other. I wish I had had this procedure and these parts when I made
my first set of wings (or my second) (or my third)!
Anyway, if you haven’t built
your wings yet, you should really consider ordering a set of these flaperons.
They are $500 each or $2,000 for the set of 4. They have to be shipped
by motor freight and the wooden crating is $40. They will save you a ton
of time over making your own flaperons and really simplify the construction
of your wings. AND they are BETTER! |
| After Oshkosh last year, I committed to molding
the main gear wheel pants or "fairings". This was a REAL molding challenge.
The fairings had to be made in halves. If I had molded them in one piece,
I couldn’t have gotten the mold off the plug and/or I couldn’t have gotten
the parts out of the molds. This is because of a circumstance called "negative
draft".
There was also the fact that I was using the actual fairings on my plane
as the plugs for the molds and the danger of damaging the paint was very
real. It all worked out just fine and the paint was not damaged and we
got beautiful molds! The fairings are in 2 halves and there is a joggle
down the center for joining with a layer of BID. That joint also has a
flange molded into both sides so that the initial joining is accomplished
just by floxing the flanges together. There is no guesswork to joining
them and the BID tape is applied after they are joined just to strengthen
the joint. |
They literally just sit right on the wing and
are floxed to the wing. There is still a fair amount of work to filling
and glassing the bottom side, but with the top side molded it saves weeks
and weeks of work and you are assured that they are exactly alike. The
alternative is to stick a bunch of blue foam on the wing as per the instructions
and start carving. The challenge becomes apparent pretty quickly that it
is hard to determine just what is the correct shape, and then to try to
make both sides identical is also not easy if you are not used to doing
that sort of thing. It has been done by a lot of folks with varying degrees
of success and you can do it too, but these molded parts reduce weeks of
work to literally a few hours.
The Main Gear Fairings are also $500 each or $1,000 for the set of 2.
The right and left are not interchangeable. These wheel pants (fairings)
are copyrighted. |
