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Tags: Innovation, Instagram, Aviation, Computer Aided Design, Model Aircraft

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Our story in pictures.

For those who are not on the photo and video sharing service, here are at least some of the images and captions you can find there. They appear here in reverse chronological order: most recent at the top. Also, clicking the date associated with each image will take you to that particular image in the Instagram feed, where you can often find additional images in the montage.

2020–11–23 The laser cutting process while it was underway at Solocraft Canada here in Calgary. Here, the aft sections of the balsa wing ribs are being cut. We don’t know about anybody else, but we could sit and watch this all day. 🤓

2020–11–22 Another image to give a sense of scale. These are the two parts of the tip rib. They really are gorgeous.

2020–11–22 Picked up the first batch of parts from the laser cutter and they look amazing! These are the balsa parts. The plywood parts were not cut. It turns out that modulating the power of the industrial strength laser cutter (it normally is used to cut steel plate and similar material) made proceeding the other parts a non-starter. There was just too much heat. You can see that one of the elevon ribs is pretty charred but still completely usable. Lasermann recommended firms which use much lower wattage ‘laser engravers’. So the search for a firm to carry on with the work continues. On the bright side, a Google search for ‘laser engraving shops’ yields a lot more results than a similar search for ‘laser cutting shops’. Discussions are ongoing with three of them, all based in Calgary. Many thanks to the folks at Lasermann Cuts in Red Deer. You did a great job and we’ll be back to see you sometime down the road with job(s) for which your equipment will be more suitable.

2020–11–15 Finally managed to get the loft defined for the lower nose. Lofting to a point with guides is tricky as it turns out. Now that the first one is done, though, repeating the process for the top of the nose should be much more straightforward.

2020–11–15 The fully contoured surface between the two boundaries where the sides of the fuselage are flat and parallel. This is the area where the wings will eventually mate with the fuselage. Next step, the surfaces forward and aft of this surface. They are trickier because they vary in both height and width along their length.

2020–11–15 The fuselage solid reshaped using the top profile outline and shown without the defining edges. Next step is to create section drawings to define the front profile.

2020–11–11 The fore and aft outlines of the fuselage have been defined. A half ellipse was used for the forward section and two tangent curves were used to create the after, concave outline. The overall objective was for an aerodynamic elongated teardrop shape. Next step is use the profile to modify the fuselage body.

2020–11–11 “Je veux évoquer l’influence sous-jacente de la conception du fuselage: pour cela, ne cherchez pas plus loin que Laurent Negroni dont les beaux dessins de tous les continents de transport valent bien le coup d’œil. Ils sont uniques et magnifiques. Son esthétique «rétro futuriste» est ce que j’ai gardé à l’esprit lorsque j’ai réalisé les croquis originaux du fuselage. Je ne suis pas et ne serai jamais dans le même univers que Negroni, mais je fais certainement de mon mieux pour imiter l’esprit de son travail alors que je passe du croquis au produit fini et physique. Je tiens beaucoup à attribuer à son travail l’information du mien.” — Terence C. Gannon

2020–11–09 The rough solid for the tail has been added and centered. Also, the fuselage top profile has begun to be defined. The shaded rectangle below the fuselage is it’s ‘shadow’ being cast on the Sketch plane. The two construction lines define the fore and aft locations where the fuselage must be flat to facilitate the eventual mating with the wings. Forward and after of these lines, the fuselage pod will be ‘sharpened’ accordingly.

2020–11–07 A restart of the fuselage work. There was a seemingly endless list of frustrations with the package used previously so after finishing up the wings and sending the profiles off for lasercutting, the fuselage work will continue with Onshape. The side profile of the fuselage has been brought over and then extruded into a solid 44.5 mm (1.75") wide.