Chapter 20 – Winglets + CS spar shots

Today I started out by removing the tape & the peel ply from the winglets’ edges… and of course I cleaned up a lot of peel ply gunk.

I removed the winglets from their mounts… everything looked good!

Chap 20 - Winglet Build Chap 20 - Winglet Build

Chap 20 - Winglet Build

I then cut the UNI, BID and peel ply for glassing the second/last/other side of the winglets. The pic below is just a shot of some of my leftover glass scraps.  There’s a lot of glass that gets left over and I try to reuse as much as possible.  One thing about fiberglass is that if it gets wet, with virtually anything liquid including water, sweat, or especially epoxy, it’s done for & must be thrown out.  Also, if it’s physically damaged it can’t be reused.

Glass Scraps

Another couple shots of the winglets.

Chap 20 - Winglet Build

Chap 20 - Winglet Build

I weighed down the winglets, one at a time, and cut off the fishtail & removed the peel ply from the trailing edge.  I will say one good thing on the winglets is that when the glass & epoxy are this fresh the TE peel ply comes off A LOT easier! (whew…)

Chap 20 - Winglet BuildChap 20 - Winglet BuildChap 20 - Winglet BuildChap 20 - Winglet BuildChap 20 - Winglet Build

Glassing the final layups on the winglets were going to be a lot easier if I could use more of the work bench, so I removed the CS spar from its jig–since it had cured for ~3 days–and tore down the jig.

Chap 14 - CS spar removed from jigChap 14 - CS spar removed from jigChap 14 - CS spar removed from jig

Chap 14 - CS spar removed from jig

The pic above shows that the whole jig stayed fairly level during the course of the first major part of the CS spar build.

Chap 14 - CS spar jig teardownChap 14 - CS spar jig teardown

After tearing down the jig & getting all the jig pieces removed, I did a fairly thorough cleanup.

I remounted the winglets Inboard side up (bare blue foam), sanded down the LE & Dremeled the dead micro from the winglets.

Chap 20 - Winglet BuildChap 20 - Winglet Build

I refilled my epoxy jug & hardener bottles . . . apparently all this building is gettin’ it done since I only have about 2 gallons of epoxy left.

After getting the consumables reloaded, I made 2 COM antennas with 17 ft leads.  I then took them out to the workshop & mocked them up on the winglets (albeit they are not in the correct location on the winglets in these pics).

Chap 20 - Winglet BuildChap 20 - Winglet BuildChap 20 - Winglet Build

 

 

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