I took the day off and since the kids are at school and the wife is working I'm free to play! There is too much wind to fly, so time to make some balsa dust! I wanted to get some work done on the Red Swan, my Model Airplane News Contest plane, and another plane or two.
First up is starting on the Red Swan's wing center section. I had to refer to my previous build on this wing to make sure I had the order of the ribs correct. I'm glad I did that build thread, as it made setting up this wing quick and easy. I'm doing a few things differently on this build. The previous build had a block of 6 ribs right in the center. In this case I'm leaving four of them out and will instead use some balsa block carved to shape in a few key areas. The wing hold-down bolts will go through this blocking instead of the stack of ribs. In theory this should save a little bit of weight.
I'm also using only half of the spacers that go at the spar. There are enough pieces to install one in front and behind the spar, which I did on the previous build. Based on the strength of that previous wing I think it's just not necessary so I'm only putting them in front of the spar (as pictured). I may change that after the glue dries and I get a chance to see if there is too much flex, but I think this will work.
The leading edge will be carbon fiber as the previous build used. The kit includes a couple lengths of hard balsa stock that should be used, but in my opinion it just isn't as good an option as using a little CF.
One note to anybody building this plane, pay close attention to the pieces used for spacing the ribs! If you look closely you'll find a couple of them are cut with a very slight angle instead of a standard 90 degree cut. The pieces with the slight angle are used at the ends to make the outside ribs lean in just slightly to set the dihedral properly. These are easy to miss.
First up is starting on the Red Swan's wing center section. I had to refer to my previous build on this wing to make sure I had the order of the ribs correct. I'm glad I did that build thread, as it made setting up this wing quick and easy. I'm doing a few things differently on this build. The previous build had a block of 6 ribs right in the center. In this case I'm leaving four of them out and will instead use some balsa block carved to shape in a few key areas. The wing hold-down bolts will go through this blocking instead of the stack of ribs. In theory this should save a little bit of weight.
I'm also using only half of the spacers that go at the spar. There are enough pieces to install one in front and behind the spar, which I did on the previous build. Based on the strength of that previous wing I think it's just not necessary so I'm only putting them in front of the spar (as pictured). I may change that after the glue dries and I get a chance to see if there is too much flex, but I think this will work.
The leading edge will be carbon fiber as the previous build used. The kit includes a couple lengths of hard balsa stock that should be used, but in my opinion it just isn't as good an option as using a little CF.
One note to anybody building this plane, pay close attention to the pieces used for spacing the ribs! If you look closely you'll find a couple of them are cut with a very slight angle instead of a standard 90 degree cut. The pieces with the slight angle are used at the ends to make the outside ribs lean in just slightly to set the dihedral properly. These are easy to miss.