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Thanks as always to everyone for some nice comments! I am painting the right lower wing buck right now, should be finished this weekend or so. Have the 4 blade prop moulds finished, I added a pic of them on the photo gallery page. The nosegear mount is finished, there's a pic of it also on the Photo gallery page. Weight is 6 lbs. This part carries all the nosegear loads up into the engine mount and carries the rear link loads, as well as creates the diagonal stiffener for the engine mount frame. I'll machine the hardpoints for it and get it bolted up under the engine, and then attach the nosegear. I now have both of the lower flap moulds done. I am moving out of my shop to a new place. 50% more room, and a better location. This will give me the room to assemble the wings onto the fuse when that time comes. Old shop is only 19' wide so you see how it might have been cramped. Have been talking to a company that makes moulded Polycarbonate windscreens about screens for the LP1. Will now go ahead with the moulds for those parts, I already have the shapes on the upper cockpit mould so it's just a matter of splashing some off that. The autoclave, a 30" by 50", rated at 100 psi and 250F, with cooling cycle, is finished. You can see a pic of it here somewhere. Sorry about spending the time on it that I did, but it will pay off for the LP1, it's about $40k's worth of equipment that I could have never afforded if I hadn't designed and fabricated it myself. The lower aileron moulds are complete. The upper aileron moulds are finished. There is a pic of all of these here somewhere. Also is a pic of the 4 blade prop hub bolted to the gearbox output flange, you might note that it is a 4 bolt pattern, I went away from the SAE2 flange which is 6 0.500" bolts to this pattern, I had planned to do that when I designed the output flange and added that bolt pattern at that time. Have all the metals and parts for that now so I can finish it all soon. 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. Am now machining all the hub and guts of this prop as well, there is a video of the prop hub being machined in my CNC lathe below here somewhere. 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 gel 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. My 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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