Comet Sailplane Project
This morning I started preparing to build the
large Sailplane wing. I went through my Bob Holman's box and sorted out all
of the 78 rib and sub rib pieces as shown below. It is interesting, there
were three extra No. 15 ribs and one No. 17 extra rib.
Looking over the two halves of the Comet blue
line wing plans carefully, I decided that I needed to go to the blue print
center for some help. I selected the right wing half plan as the master and
had it digitally scanned in and a black line copy made. In order to
eliminate drawing and shrinkage differences from the right and left wing
half plans, I had the digital scan of the right wing half xerographically
reversed and a black line copy made so as to produce an identical left wing
half plan. In the plan segment taped together below, you can see how the
plan lettering is reversed on the left side of the wing's center line. This
is a great process and works really well.
The right and reversed left wing half black line
copies are laid together in the picture below just to get a feel for the
large size of the Sailplane wing.
Since the plan had no complete wing center
section, I had the operator print out a short root segment of the right and
reversed left wing half plans. When I got home, I trimmed off the right plan
segment along the center line and taped it to the reversed left plan segment
to form a complete wing center section plan as shown below.
After lunch, I drove over to Roy's Hobby Shop in
Hurst, Texas, and picked up all of the straight balsa wood required to build
the wing with. However, I had to buy oversize wood because the plans call
for such odd ball sizes (i.e., for
the 9/32" X 1" trailing edge I had to get 3/8" X 1", for one of the 3/16" X
19/32" leading edge pieces I had to get 3/16" X 3/4" and so on).
This is OK, it just means that I have a lot of trimming and
sanding work to do on the wing sections to remove the excess wood.
Oh yes, while I was at the hobby shop, I
picked up a plate of .01" sheet brass to make the McCoy 60's exhaust
extension with, but I won't do that right now. I will build the left wing
tip panel first as per the plans, which involves laminating the leading edge
of that segment.............................Tandy