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Chronicle of my homebuilt experimental aircraft. |
Total build time: 16 hours.
I decided to build the rear stabilators first. I gathered and laid out some of the necessary parts, cut and finished some angle components from aluminum extrusion.
I then made the necessary bends in the “hockey sticks”, which are the strengtheners and attach points for the front spars of the stabilators.
These are my first clecoes (temporary sheet metal fasteners), as I built the shape of the stabilator frames.
Hello Ryan!
Thanks for the very useful blog.
I am beginning construction of Waiex #30 and need to bend my hockey sticks. I’ve been looking at bend radii sheets and figuring out what dimensions to use. I figured a .75 radius should work, but was wondering if you still had the dimensions for the pipe and block that you used. I was also wondering what the two marks you made represented (setback?)
Many thanks,
Andrew Bishop
Andrew, I’m trying to recall how I did that. The second (blue) line I believe was one of the bend tangency lines, but it might have just been a reference line. I know that I used 2 wood blocks, the first had a 1″ wide gap that I used to set the initial bend in the metal, the second had a 1.5″ wide gap to complete the bend. My method seemed to work pretty well, but these are by no means hard numbers.
Something to be sure to do is fully deburr/smooth the edges of the hockey sticks prior to bending.
Ryan,
Thanks for making such a nice blog. I’ve built an RV7 and just now very excited to start building a Waiex (my kit arrives in June). Back when I was building the RV Dan Checkoway made the ‘definitive’ RV build log that everyone referred to. I think your great blog could serve the same role for the Waiex. I’ve made numerous notes/links based on reading all your posts. Please, if you ever decide to take this excellent blog down please let me know so I can mirror it ;-).
Kevin
Thanks for your kind words Kevin, glad I can help!