Bloop News... Last Update: May 15, 2012
Flying a motorfloater ......by Mike Sandlin
The
upper right wing panel is fully fabric covered, sewn, and taped, with
one coat of butyrate dope overall. The weight of this wing panel is now
16 pounds, a pound or pound and a half increase due to the fabric, as
expected for the 1.8 ounces per square yard fabric weight. This
wing is flyable as is, and will never be stronger, but I will apply
silvering (for sun protection) and colored dope to complete the job.
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In
my shop, the upper right wing is getting its first fabric application.
The top main panel of each wing is curved, whereas all the rest of the
fabric on the airplane is essentially flat, and a special covering method is used
to keep the upper surface smooth. The goal is to have full spanwise
fabric tension in
the finished fabric but lesser chordwise tension, so the fabric is
fully tensioned but pulled flat across the ribs and not so much down
between them.
A
fabric panel is cut from the roll and trimmed, then draped over the top
of the frame. With clothes pins retaining about an inch of
chordwise slack, the fabric is cemented to the front and back spar tubes as shown. Next, the clothes pins will be removed and the ends of the fabric will be cemented to the frame at the wing tip and root without any spanwise slack,
with the chordwise slack spread out into small wrinkles instead of one
big one. After a hot clothes iron is used to shrink the fabric, the
main panels will be smooth and any remaining irregularities at the
edges will be small and can be ignored or taped over.
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The
upper right wing of the Bloop2 is ready for fabric covering. This
assembly weighs 14.5 pounds, with a couple of interplane cables
still attached. The cat provides scale (the wing chord is 48 inches). A
garden hose on the lawn was removed from the image by editing, which is
why digital photos should no longer be taken as evidence of
actual situations.
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The new version of the Bloop is taking shape. This is the wing frame in
my backyard in San Diego when
new wing tips were being made. For
Bloop2, as compared to Bloop1, the struts are a
little longer and the stagger has been reduced.
Here
in a later shot I'm installing Styrofoam blocks between the ribs to
form a leading edge shell. I try to do my epoxy mixing in the warm part
of the day to improve the quality of the final bond.
