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Wednesday, March 19, 2008

K8B Airbrakes

Progress on the K8B has been a little slow lately with last month end being financial year end and all that. But I did manage to get the basic planning done for the airbrakes and here is construction progress so far.

Started off with a full size cross section drawing from the wing - four ribs bays long by the depth of the wing at the point at which the brakes are to be installed. Then cut a balsa blade and two actuators. Pinned the actuators at their centre pivot point into the building board and adjusted the length until everything worked nicely. Yeah, not very scientific but adequately functional planning for me.










Then went out shopping to find some materials to build it. Builders Warehouse had some L-shaped extruded aluminium strip 1.4mm thick, 12.7mm deep and 6.35mm wide. Now who on earth in real life would require aluminium strip with these exact dimensions? Never mind - it was just perfect for me. Got a few 3mm bolts and nuts and headed back to the workshop.

I was going to make the actuator rods from aluminium as well until I remembered there was some 1,5mm fiberglass printed circuit board lying around on a shelf somewhere - just perfect for the job - cuts easily on the jig saw - a whole lot easier to work with than the aluminium. Measured everything carefully, drilled all the 3mm holes and below are the results:















Anyone know where I can get some neat little 3mm rivets to replace those ugly bolts?

Next step will be to build the plywood box for the unit, bolt the whole thing together and drop it into a hole in the wing.

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