Comet Sailplane
Project
This report is kind
of a combination of the earlier No. 100 and 103 for the
construction
of the left wing
tip panel and has been included for documentation purposes.
Late Sunday afternoon I began work on the right
wing tip panel by modifying and laying out the composite tip/trailing edge
pieces. Then I cut out the leading edge strips, soaked them in water, and
glued the two piece lamination down on the plan in the leading edge curve as
shown below.
I glued the laminated leading edge to
the composite tip/trailing edge structure as shown below. I also sorted out
all of the spars, ribs and sub ribs for the tip panel and lightly sanded of
the laser burned edges as best I could.
The two missing sub ribs, No. 15 and No. 18, for
this right wing panel was made when the left wing tip panel was built as
shown below.
As with the left tip panel, there were several
iterations of custom trimming and tweaking of the rib cut outs required to
get each of the four tapered spars to slide straight through the cut outs in
the all of the ribs. The six ribs were glued in place and then the four
tapered spars were inserted into the rib cut outs and also glued in place.
Finally the sub ribs were fitted and glued in as well as shown below.
Filler balsa was added the top of the tip pieces as shown below for later
contouring.
This shows the top balsa inlay on the tip sanded
to contour, which really ties the tip together. As you can see, the balsa
inlay work has produced a beautiful sculptured right wing tip that will
cover very nicely. Down in the lower right of this picture you see the left
tip panel that I used as a guide to shape and sculpture the right tip panel.
Notice that I only have one diagonal of the Warren Truss installed so far
and that was so I could shape the tip properly. I will add the rest later.
This shows a bottom view of the right tip panel.
Notice that I have decided to put gussets on both sides of the ribs at the
trailing edge joints. I will go back and add the gussets to the left half of
the wing later........................Tandy
