Chapter 10 - Canard construction - Part 1

Well here I begin with an all new part of this project, the canard. I finally get to let the fuselage rest and collect some dust while I work on something different.

I am going to build the "Special performance canard" or better known as the Roncz R1145MS.

Rutan stopped selling plans so I have figured out a way of scaling the scanned images available on the TERF-CD. With that and some other data I have found, I feel confident that I can produce accurate jigs for this part of the project. However, to ensure that the canard is built as accurate and correct as possible and to minimize tooling and time, I have placed an order with Eureca CNC for precut cores. I have heard good things about the quality of Steve's (the owner, creator, etc of Eureka) product.

Unfortunately (for me anyhow) at this time Steve is at Oshkosh and he will not be able to ship my canard cores until next week at the soonest. So, in the meantime, I have begun fabricating some of the hardware. Pictured are the two aluminum lift tabs and the nut plates I made from anchor nuts riveted to an aluminum plate.

Chapter 9 - Complete!

Finally chapter 9 is complete. Today I finished fairing the landing break and installing the linear actuator. To be truthful I actually need to do some finish work on the top bracket and the landing break and surrounding areas still need some finishing work. I just don't want to get to crazy making everything perfect until the finishing stages of the project.

A couple of photos of the landing break:



And a video for your viewing pleasure:

Chapter 9 - Main gear - Part 3

Progress on this project has been quite slow lately. I have been very slowly working on getting the main gear axles installed. The plans do not describe this process in much detail and I had a hard time figuring out how to mount the flat axle and flat aluminum plate to a somewhat oval shaped strut.

I ended up laying a thin flox bed on the strut and clamping the axle in place with some plastic in place to keep the strut from bonding. I then sanded the flox flat.

Then I spread the strut apart with a come-a-long and wedged it with a 4x4. I then mounted it upside down on the fuselage. I was not quite clear why this was recommended (by a forum contributer) however I realized was able to ensure the axles were mounted at the same waterline (height) when the full weight of the aircraft is bearing down on the gear.

I then took the strut down and clamped it to the side of my work bench. I carefully measured for toe in and sanded the cured flox flats until the axles were in the proper position. I then layed up 6 ply of bid and, using clamps, bonded the axles to the strut.

After the axles were cured and glass trimmed, I bonded 3"x3" aluminum plates to the inside of the strut with 10 layers of bid (I used 10 to ensure the plate was relatively flat and parallel to the axle. After that cured I trimmed the aluminum plate and made fine adjustments to the strut to ensure the break parts will not bind on the strut.

You may notice the many hardware store washers on the bolts mounting the axles. The bolts are too long and I will order some shorter bolts and discard the washers.