Construction Photos

I cut the CR's with a circle cuter on my drill press.

One of 4 CR's.

Then I test fitted the CR's on the MMT.

Here I am shaping the Fin's.

Jarod is holding a finished shaped fin.

I then cut the sono tube for the through wall fins, I found that using a knife worked better then a saw for this.

February 21st 2003 I have filleted the fins to the motor tube. Once dry we can move onto glassing tip to tip.

Fillets have to be done to all surfaces.

March 16th, 2003 I have almost finished the fillets on the skin to the motor mount.,

I have also Epoxy the middle CR to the MMT in order to epoxy the skin to the MMT The fillets are on the outside of the skin to the fins as well as inside the skin to the fins. It isvery important to put these fillets in for strength when you willbe dealing with fin flutter from MACH transitional speeds .

Another picture showing the fillets.

First test fit of the air frame.

I then filled the fin can with expanding foam.

Starting to glass tip to tip.

Making sure that the resin is getting everywhere.

making sure that the glass is forming to the angles

One last bit of resin for the finishing.

Va La one side done 3 to go.

I then did tip to tip with carbon fiber for extra strength.

After the carbon I glassed the top half of the fin can.

Finished product

Another test fit with Jarod looking on.

Electronics bay.

Electronics bay with top coupler.

Inside view of the electronics bay.

Getting ready to make a nose cone out of 2" foam.

First off I want to say I had a lot of fun making this nose cone. Here you will see what it took to build the nose cone and I wish to thank Dave Ross and Scott West for all Their help with teaching me how to make a nose cone. First thing was to use VCP to make a template of the nose cone and lay it out on the 2" foam I then cut the foam and glued it together. After letting it dry, I put it on Dave's lath and away we went .

Dave's nose cone lath.

I cut the foam into the length of the cone then glued it all together.

Dave help me set it up on the lath.

With the foan block turning slowly I started to cut.

You have to cut very slowly so not to jam the lath.

It toke about 3 hours to make the nose cone.

One finished cone ready for glassing.

Main air frame filled with drywall compound to fill in the gaps.

Big time problem after the glass dried and I primed the airframe this is what I found. It toke me 2 days of sanding and another 3 layers of glass to fix this problem. What happened was the resin expaneded the layer joints on the sono tube causing this.

6 layers of glass later and it looks great.

Painting has begun on the airframe 2 weeks till Roc Lake