Progress report on “Blue II”

As of December 29, 2008

Jan and I, joined by the entire Blue Crew, hope all of our friends, fans, and sponsors had a very Merry Christmas, because we did. This team has so much to be thankful for.

Building the center radio console, installing the seats, arm rests, cooler air scoop and stabilizer were construction steps which had to be accomplished with the wing attached.

The radio rack is rather straightforward with the Garmin 420W, 330, 240 and SL-40.

The front seat has been modified to make its removal a lot easier. Once the fasteners are removed, the seat slides forward about an inch, and then can be lifted straight out, seat back and all. The dummy blue stick in this photo is to insure we can remove the seat without removing the stick.

The fitting of the cooler air scoop took considerably longer than I had anticipated. It has been on and off what seems like a hundred times, but this is the final location. It will come off one more time for wing removal and painting. When it goes on for the last time, it will be attached semi-permanently. Some of the modifications we made to the scoop can be seen in this photo. We left all of the other parts of the cooler air ducting exposed carbon, and I wish now I had left the inside of the scoop exposed carbon as well.

Like the scoop, the stabilizer was off and on as many times. Some of the trouble we had was a reliable reference point for X and the Z axis for the fuselage. We wound up with an amazing matrix on the floor of chalk lines and plumb bob reference points. The rear attach bracket was mounted as far to the right on the forward vertical spar as possible. Even with this effort, the left stabilizer is ¼” longer than the right. If anyone complains about this, we will take a saw to the left tip. With all the shims in place and the bolts tight, we reconciled the alignment to insure it was straight and square. The decalage angle is 3/10s of a degree more than factory specifications, which is our collective best estimate to compensate for the difference in the wing incidence angle we use.

12/24/2008 Christmas Eve we separated the fuselage from the wing again. The fuselage is back in its cradle for installation of the avionics and electronics. We are happy with the new wing stands. The wing is now bolted to the stands by bolting the jack pads to the wing then bolting the pads to the sands.

As I indicated earlier, the electrical systems and avionics are the next to be installed. Due to the complexity of the electronics, it is not likely that we will be able to complete this work in just a month, but I will try to make the January report interesting.

We will be back at work as hard and fast as we can on the 5th of January. Until our next report, we wish everyone a Happy New Year.

Jan, John and The Blue Crew.
 

 

 

Blue Thunder Air Racing

5805 Alpha Avenue

Reno, Nevada 89506

(775) 677-4860

www.bluethunderairracing.com