Well, it's been a few days since our last post, so we figured we would bring you up to speed on how things are going on the first of our two Black Baron Specials.

Working in the kitchen was NOT a good idea! Guys, it really is great if your girl will let you carve wood in the house, but I have found that there is a threshold beyond which even I cannot tolerate the mess! We moved our operation down to the basement three days ago. I am much happier now. I can work in peace without worries of how long the mess will take for cleanup and I don't feel guilty for trashing the place. It was beginning to feel like we were remodeling. If you have never lived in a house that is being remodeled, it SUCKS!

We ran into problems when the plans gave us a template for setting the angle for the innermost rib of each wing panel. After getting both wing panels built using the supplied template, we went to join the panels and found they didn't meet on the top when using the supplied dihedral brace.

We went out and got a protractor and measured the template and the dihedral brace. They both measured 5 degrees. Formula: 1 Dihedral brace of 5 degrees = 2(template of 5 degrees). That doesn't compute! We were 5 degrees out of tolerance. Doh![:@] Lesson learned. We've changed our template to 2.5 degrees for kit number two.

We joined the wings and filled the gap. Used epoxy to fill it (before I asked for advice). It may be heavier than it needed to be, but we're slapping an Irvine 53 (heh, heh!) on it, so it should be able to carry the extra weight.

We still have to wrap the joint between the two wing panels in fiberglass/epoxy and then add ailerons, hardware and the servo. The plans call for one servo to drive both ailerons. The wings have been shaped now and are really starting to look like an airfoil.

We have the vertical stabilizer, horizontal stabilizer, elevator and rudder done and waiting to be mounted to the fuselage.

For the past couple of days, Eva and I have been working on the fuselage. We installed the firewall, which has been drilled out for fuel lines, the engine mount and the throttle control. We then added fuselage doublers to the area under where the wing is mounted, and some diagonal stiffeners toward the tail.

Things are coming along nicely right now. Here are the latest pics: