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  1. BoKu

    How to build a team?

    "If you want to build a ship, don’t drum up the men to gather wood, divide the work and give orders. Instead, teach them to yearn for the vast and endless sea."--Antoine de Saint-Exupery
  2. BoKu

    Fastener Heads

    NASA has finally opened the Osiris-REx canister with its precious few ounces of material sampled from the Bennu asteroid. They've been working on opening it since October, stymied by the last two of 35 fasteners. The fasteners? Torq-sets, which by design accommodate more insertion torque...
  3. BoKu

    Human CG position relative to seat

    As Jay suggests, the location of the belly button is a good approximation of the human CG across a wide variety of seating configurations.
  4. BoKu

    Fastener Heads

    As a user of tri-wing screws, can confirm.
  5. BoKu

    Sparlite 52 unidirectional pultruded carbon fiber rectangular strip 5mm x 2mm

    I did a demo of a spar layup at ESA Tehachapi in September 2023, there might be video of that. But really, there's not much that Marske hasn't covered in his book.
  6. BoKu

    TOP 5 Aircraft 'Designed' by 5 Year Olds!

    This explains much about the Cybertruck.
  7. BoKu

    "Surfboard" wings with carbon rod spars?

    For wing skins, our wing core foam is usually 1/4" thick. On the gliders, I use 3/16" for the horizontal stabilizer, and 1/8" for control surfaces. The gliders have full ribs only at the root and tip, with half-ribs where necessary to anchor control bellcranks. We get away with that because...
  8. BoKu

    "Surfboard" wings with carbon rod spars?

    ...But the skin can be. The Maupin Windrose sailplane featured foam core wings with trenches for fiberglass roving spar caps, and nothing but the skin around the leading edge and drag spar to react shear. Wooden dowels inserted at intervals into vertical holes connecting the upper and lower spar...
  9. BoKu

    Sparless recycled paper core wings

    When I was in my teens, I was obsessed with the idea of a tiny prone-position sailplane very much like this one. As I spent more time around gliderports and glider contests, I met several glider pilots and former glider pilots who limped or walked with canes after injuring their feet and ankles...
  10. BoKu

    Sparless recycled paper core wings

    That is also the method that Dick Schreder used when he was making the honeycomb-core HP-15 wings.
  11. BoKu

    "Surfboard" wings with carbon rod spars?

    Kind of the standard practice is to use 6oz (actually 5.7oz or so) plain or twill weave +/-45 in wing skins. So one-core-one is a ply of that 6oz +/-45, then core foam (most often Divynicell H60), and then another ply of 6oz +/-45. The 6oz we use most often is a woven +/-45 biaxial, so it comes...
  12. BoKu

    "Surfboard" wings with carbon rod spars?

    I've had the HP-24 to 140 KIAS at 12,000 feet, I don't know what the TAS would have worked out to. Its one-core-one wings seem to be aging just fine. But, yeah, one-core-one is a bit light for something with more span loading than a glider. These wings are two-core-two ahead of the spar and...
  13. BoKu

    "Surfboard" wings with carbon rod spars?

    I'd recommend designing around 5mm x 2mm pultruded uni strips. I have a couple thousand meters of the stuff in stock. https://hpaircraftblog.wordpress.com/sparlite-52-unidirectional-pultruded-strip/
  14. BoKu

    Cri-Cri plane build using 4 inch insulation foam

    Moldless foam core with ambient cure works as well as it does because of how well 7725 and 7715 can be draped and saturated. With carbon, it is far harder to know how well the cloth is saturated onto the core foam, so it is harder to be assured that the carbon is well supported by the foam. That...
  15. BoKu

    Unlimited Air Racing Dead?

    He meant T6.
  16. BoKu

    Aluminium rear spar manufacturing question

    On the HP-16 through HP-18, Dick Schreder reduced the spar braking to a non-precision operation by having builders fabricate the drag spar by riveting together two braked angles 15-131(R|L) and 15-132. http://soaridaho.com/Schreder/Schreder/HP-18_construction_3.html
  17. BoKu

    Experimental Soaring Association 2023 Western Workshop & Symposium

    Just getting back on my feet now. Here's the list: Mold: Rough wooden mold sawn from Douglas Fir 1x4, assembled with #6 x 1-5/8" wallboard screws, and coated with plastic tape for release. Materials: Pultrusions: Sparlite 52 5mmx 2mm rectangular section from HP Aircraft, LLC Shear web: 6oz...
  18. BoKu

    Extra Holes Drilled In MAX Pressure Bulkheads

    This morning I had a chat with an industry contact aware of the situation. Apparently it isn't as bad as it has been made out to be. We're not talking about full figure-8 holes. It's holes that have smaller "lobes" off to the side. Basically, the pilot holes in the two parts didn't line up, and...
  19. BoKu

    Extra Holes Drilled In MAX Pressure Bulkheads

    From the article: (Any errors or typos are mine; they don't allow Ctrl+C so I had to re-type the para.) I have done some semi-janky **** on rivets when it was just one or two in a pattern and I was pretty sure they would look decent on either side and test out full strength. But I can't...
  20. BoKu

    Here we go...Synergy still NO FLY and lighter...

    Wait, did they really draw their artist's concept being flown by stormtroopers? Maybe that'll be their excuse for not hitting their performance targets.
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