December-eve Update

Boy, you take a couple of days off for Thanksgiving and the orders pile up!  I’m working on them, but people seem to be stocking up on supplies (lots of little things).  Also, lots of orders for parts that require me to make things – lots of hands-on time for me.  Oh well, I asked for it!

Things that I have been doing in non-production hours:

The Nunez Peanut Yak-3 is still sitting on my building board; the bare plan, vacu-formed pieces, and cut parts staring at me, telling me to get busy.  That’s my next build, for sure, but I don’t know if I will get to it before our next Indoor session (Dec 10th).  Or maybe I will as Michigan is currently restricting such gatherings until the 9th – they might extend, which would cancel our December meet and give me another month to build before January.

I couldn’t help myself and took my light-weight He.178 JetCat (6.5 grams light for a 10.5″ span!) outside on a calm morning this week.  It certainly shows potential, but it is hard to trim in my yard:  I had it bouncing off all four “walls” (tree lines) in my back yard.  I’ll get some Gurney flaps on it and hope to get it flying like I want, but that will need to wait until Indoors.

I’ve been concentrating my drawing time on the Gene Smith Cessna Cardinal (21.5″ span).  Gene designed it as Keel and Former.  I think I finally have the shapes of the formers finalized, along with stringer placement (12 stringers in addition to the four keels).  To me, this is the hardest part -not only do I have to locate the stringer notches on each former, but I have to make sure the notches on ALL the formers result in a nice smooth flowing line, avoiding dog-legs in the stringer as the test build is completed.  Usually, I have to change the location of one or two notches when I start to build.  I’ve got the formers about 95% converted to parts/cut layout and the sheet placement has started – about 60% complete.

Well, it’s time to finish my lunch and get back to making those parts!