Some of you may have come across this. It's an example of amazing metal craftsmanship and has been ten years in the making. The project is documented on youtube: Frankenstein
While it's admirable in its execution, he freely admits to having done pretty much zero work on any kind of stress analysis. He looked at other aircraft etc and obviously has experience with aircraft structures, but this was entirely done by eyeball engineering; That Looks About Right. I have a problem with that. I asked him about this on a facebook post but I didn't want to get confrontational with him and suggested he could try to contact someone with just a little engineering experience to at least check his spars and struts and attachments, but he sort of dismissed that. It may well prove to be fine, but I would not get into that front seat and I would discourage anyone else too.
In his videos he actually describes his front spar very well and one could make a stab at figuring out its section modulus from that and doing a few sums, but one would need a bit more information. Plus, the wing is skinned but has no stringers and large rib spacing, so it's probably not contributing a lot to the overall bending strength. It doesn't look flimsy but to me , it's borderline. There is a lot of overhang beyond the strut which is far from an ideal position and they look very spindly too. Fuselage and tail I'm not too concerned but the rest?
Perhaps someone with a bit of engineering background could reach out to him and offer to do some napkin calculations? He seems a reasonable sort of guy and not the kind that knows better and is willing to kill himself to prove it - there are lots of examples of those.
