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Thanks as always to everyone for some nice comments! Have now finished the right and left upper aileron bucks and am taking moulds off them this week. The lower aileron bucks are machined and ready to be painted. Also have the aileron trim tab bays and trim tab bucks ready to machine, should have these done this week. Lot of moulds going on right now and that's a good thing! Got the landing gear door hinge mounts machined and ready to bond in place. The four blade prop buck blanks are finished. Bit of weight savings over the current three blade, easier to manufacture and probably cost less as well. Getting ready to machine all the hub and guts of this prop as well. The original three blade was configured for the LP1 when I had very little actual weight data for the airframe to go off, so I used other similar aircraft's weights. As the LP1 progressed I realized that my empty weight was going to come in hundreds of pounds lighter than I originally designed for, so to get the plane to trim out at this lower weight I started to choose a higher cruise altitude. This has pushed the prop requirements to need more blade area than the original three blade design, so four it is. It will also apply itself for Reno as well with higher power uses. Take a look at the "Systems Control" page here, this shows some, but not all, of Alex Kalempa's efforts towards the LP1 on the electronics side of it all. Alex has been working on this for awhile now and it's all starting to gell nicely.
I have had a lot of email and discussion about using the LS7 engine, the 505 hp C6 powerplant. I have been a bit apprehensive of using it as there will be added stress on the gearbox and propeller, prop might need to go to a five blade to absorb all the torque at high altitude. I was asked recently if the LS2 would have to be bought first, then upgrade to the LS7, why do that when the LS7 is a bolt in as is? I realized that the LS7 could be used from the start, all we would do is reprogram the engine ECU to drop the rpm limit and supply the gearbox with a different ratio set, so that the output was the same as the LS2. After testing was complete with the LS7, and was ok, all that would be needed would be send the ECU in for a reprogram, and supply the other gear ratio set. Works for me. Elevators are done, got four parts out of the moulds. Weight was under my estimation, at 1.25 lbs each. I'll add the hinges and fit them at some point. My new CNC router is a large machine with a 4'6" by 10' table. This gives me the ability to machine the elliptical wing bucks with the accuracy that a laminar flow wing needs, aiming for a finished (primed and painted) surface accuracy of less than 0.010". An elliptical planform wing has a very complex shape, pretty much demands being created this way. This router was really the final missing piece to get the airframe moulds completed and will make the rest of the tooling buck work go so much quicker. It also gives us the ability to machine new propeller shapes easily as we intend to test quite a few, both for Reno and high altitude cruise efficiency. Alex Kalempa is working on flap control schematics, and we have the flap servo and control system, with system fault analysis included, mostly laid out. The flap system will self test for problems and report on the main airframe screen. He has also been working on flutter test equipment, using accelerometers in flying surfaces to measure vibration critical frequencies, along with bonded strain gauges for maximum loads. He has all the circuit boards in production for this, and we have all the details for the airframe computer pretty much finished. Be sure to see all of the pages at this site and I will answer all inquiries received.
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