Propaganda from this morning's practice session!

Neos (Standard Carbon) morning practice session (3 min 16 sec)

First full set of carboline wings and tails ready to be trimmed! Slightly resin-rich so a little porky, but man these things are stiff
Stay tuned!

Carbonline? More details please!

Light carbon layup with bulletproof tails
Hope I can finish the plane by Thursday so I can fly it at this weekend's event!
Will post pics and weights later tonight (you guys' morning!), this set of wings and tails are made with extra resin, to test some things, production ones should be lighter.

Back to building (another plane that I started a long while ago!)

Had a great day with the Neos. Did some cg testing and control throw set up's. Red DLG flew it ........all I can say is that we set up our planes a little different! Cg still at 69 mm. I think I like it there, I can over hand throw into thermals no problem. I'll post throw set ups when I'm done and totally happy.

Light Carbon (Carboline Spread Tow) Neos.

I think pictures are worth a thousand words!!
All weights are pre-hinge-cuts and pre-LE-sanding. Should be ~2 grams lighter on the wings after the cuts and sanding, and ~0.2 grams light on the tails after as well.

Stupid stiff tails.
Stupid light wings.
I'm going to have a stupid plane in the air soon.

Nice!

Thomas

Stupid! Na, BRILLIANT!!!
Great job, looks super.
Thanks for the update.

Tom R.

Wow! Nice!

Very, very nice Thomas!

Well done!

Cool treatment applied to flying surfaces LEs.

Is that bagged also? Look great.
Donnie

104g, sick!

Thanks guys!!

Note on the carboline wings, they have 2 carbon rods each side (1 full length, and 1 partial length). Tips are reinforced with 3K carbon cloth. Results of the 3K is great, so we will be transferring that to our textreme wings as well to replace the glass doubler at the tips.

Hard to see from photos, but we have now added extra resin to the hinge area, and to the TE of all surfaces. Will see how it holds up.

Yes Donnie, all bagged! We're still planning on seeing if we can get moulded versions by the end of this year, but the upgrade in September will still be bagged, only with improved layup, CNC-milled cores, and slightly updated planforms. Prices will remain the same for the next couple months
...........

We did a small test this past week, by placing 2 pieces of cloth together and laminating them with epoxy. We then pulled them apart after cure, and found the following (rough) results:
-kevlar on kevlar, no damage to skins, easy delamination
-glass on glass, glass failure before delamination
-carbon on carbon, no damage to skins, very hard to delaminate.

Empirical, no numbers, just relative to each other as we continue to try to see how we can improve on the 'entry' layup for the Neos.

Thomas,

Are you using a loose weave 3-4oz 3K cloth? I wouldn't touch the 3K stuff I have in a wing, too heavy, but clearly what you have is superior!!

Also, my interpretation is you were doing a delamination test between 2 layers of cloth, or was there foam in-between? The dominant structural failure mode in these wings is face sheet wrinkling, which is essentially a debonding of the skin from the core. That is where I would put my emphasis, evaluating foams and finish techniques to maximize this bond strength. For reference, Rohacell bonds much better to glass and carbon than most XPS foams I have used. Downside is price and it doesn't steam out.