stunthanger.com
Classic Designs => Classic Planes => Topic started by: Tom Niebuhr on August 18, 2007, 07:44:37 PM
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Jack Sheeks informed me last night that there is another Sea Vixen under construction in the Indianapolis area. It is built per the FM drawing, and will be smaller than the original, due to errors in the FM drawing.
Meanwhile, now that I have completed the removable nose gear mounting, I have flipped the airplane over and installed the top rib strips. I had found a slight bow in the outboard 1/2" sq. trailing edge spar, so I replaced it before installing the upper ribs. This will avoid any future trim problems.
I would like to go a little faster, but there are business priorities too.
I hope there will many Sheeks airplanes at VSC XX.
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Unfortunately I cannot work on the Sea Vixen, full time, with business comittments.
But here is more:
The pushrod section going up the rudders is reinforced with tin stock at the bottom, and due to limited room, a 3/32" ID tube was split and soldered to the upper portion.
The drawings show no details of the rudder construction. Jack told me to "make it any way you want". He also pointed out that the the horizontal grain on the plans is wrong. The grain on the rudders should be vertical. This also makes it possible to bend the inboard side of the rudders to the airfoiled shape. (The outboard side is flat.)
The 1/8" flat rudder sides are carefully cut, with some positive incidence added to compensate for the high stab and get equal turns inside and outside.. (alfadog, Bob Whitely, has written much on this subject in this and the other forum),
Since the full size Sea Vixen rudders blend into the booms at full width, I added a leading edge piece that will be between the rudder sides. The extremely limited room for the horns will be addressed the same way that the full sized Vixed addressed the problem. It has a box shaped area under the stab that also has position lights.
The outside of the rudders are rough sanded to shape in the photos, and will blend into the booms nicely.
In order to locate the stab with the swept wing, I made simple fixtures, for locating the stab,that are positioned at the inside of each boom.
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Tom,
Just promise me that you will put some sort of retainer around that clevis. Hate to loose this beautiful plane due to a POS clevis.
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Randy,
I don't like using a clevis either, but, there is so little room. I picked the Hayes unit since it is rugged. The other thing helping is that there are 2 push rods, thus theoretically easing the loads.
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Tom,
I understand. At least put a piece of tubing over it or twist some copper wire around it after it's on. Just a little something. I'm a belt AND suspenders man.