Hi folks,
Well what can I say.... It's like a "parallel universe" out there. (no pun intended!)
I have been so busy building my Enigma that I have not been following the "Pattern" section of RCU since late last year. It appears great minds think alike in that Mark and I both had the idea of a building site for this airframe.
To set the stage....
I have had some questions recently about my building methods and was told that "both mine and Mike (from ZNLine) sites was very helpful". Mike's site I thought to myself???.... Now I thought ZNLine had added something to their Website and so I went looking & found a bunch of great pictures of the completed airframe and was (wrongly) under the impression that this is what the reference was about.
Chad e-mailed me this morning (Mar 15th) about my incorrect use of the word "Nomex" (in my description of the fuselage prep in the "Painting" section...since corrected) and mentioned some of the guy's comments about nomex vs kevlar on RCU. This peaked my interest so off I go this morning to RCU and the "pattern" section and low and behold what do I find? This great thread from ZNLine's Mark Novack about Enigma construction! Awesome!!!
Although a lot of the pictures look very familiar :-) , this is a great 'second" look for me of the project. It's a bit unnerving going back over the pictures and methods of construction as I had only the single sheet of plans and help from Chad in construction. Following a quick perusal, there are a few things I really like & others I actually preferred my methods. It's simply preference and, as I have said on my own site, it's nice to see that there's more than one way to do things.
The key here is to take these great idea's & methods, while taking the "mystery" out, and employing them to create your own aircraft. With that said, I believe these two sites can complement each other and give the prospective buyer a view of both Mark's excellent building techniques as well as a "joe builder" (me) out in the world. Perspective buyers and builders of the unfinished kit should see that you can build this or any other similar airframe without the "factory jigs" etc. and all the nice tools that a professional shop such as ZNLine has. (I love that router!)
Techniques varied but I will say this, the kit itself is an excellent product and the end result will be an excellent tool to carve the skies with. In fact I liked the first kit so much I have ordered another as a backup (that's another story).
It's interesting to note that Mark was unaware of my site even though JP had a link on ZNLine's page! I am sure I'll be in touch with Mark over the coming days/months as I we share a common bond through this kit. Similar to his plans at the end of construction, I will sit down and admire the work and it's result. There will be a subtle difference though that I will, for the time being, save for that final completion date. A little mystery if you will....
I'll be sure to let Mark and everyone else in on it when I am done!
Thanks for the "new" insight Mark and also to all those folks that have sent those great comments to me on my site.
Dave Reaville
NSRCA 3156
MAAC 56510
http://members.shaw.ca/nsrcawestdistrict
Enigma site is at:
http://members.shaw.ca/nsrcawestdistrict/enigma.htm