She is in the bag, fingers crossed there are no issues so I can move to the next process!

Fin came out nice. I have trimmed the fat and have filled the LE. It will be ready for final sanding tomorrow. I plan to attach it to the fuselage and blend it at some point tomorrow afternoon. I need to make the horizontal stab now...

I mounted the fin this morning with 5-minute epoxy. First I sanded the fuselage to bare wood to ensure a good bond. After the 5 minute cured, I shaped the extreme rear of the fuselage to match the last 20% of the vertical fin. I had to cut 1 5/8" off the fuse plug, but that left enough meat to create a nice radius from the bottom of the fuse to the trailing edge of the fin. I started the fillet and it is curing now. I made a fillet template out of some scrap mylar. It will take one more pass to get the fillet perfect.

My workshop is hovering at the 110 degree mark. Resin that should take 12hours+ to cure to a sandable state is going off in 2 hours. This has let me get a little further along than I expected. I have sanded the first fillet, then shot it with a little primer for some mockup photos.

I then sanded the fillets and have the second application of filler curing now.

Some photos:

The Daisy Cutter 60" and me. This is the closest I will ever come to being in a photo with a sexy model

That looks great mate, look out daisys
Like the pointy nose.
Asto

Good stuff working in that heat Aero. Its certainly unique.
John

Originally Posted by airtimeasto

That looks great mate, look out daisys
Like the pointy nose.
Asto

Thanks Asto. I went ahead and cut a little off the nose to give it a slighly bigger radius. Right now the nose has a 3/16" radius and I may just push it to 1/4". The concern is the nose taking damage on landing if it is too thin.

Originally Posted by OZPAF

Good stuff working in that heat Aero. Its certainly unique.
John

I was fortunate to be at a step where the heat was working with me rather than against me. I would not want to be laying up parts in that kind of heat

I had to redesign the horizontal stabilizer to be larger for the shortened tail moment and to allow for the top-driven elevator configuration. The new design is perhaps 5-10% larger in surface area. I am using the same Nasa section from the foam prototype since it seemed to work fine despite being a thick 12%.

The center chord of the stabilizer had to be increased to 5 1/4" to allow for the larger elevator I plan to use. Also, I didn't want to cut an elevator clearance in the vertical fin so the elevator hing line now lands at the rear of the top of the fin. The elevator will be top-driven and bottom hinged. With the hinge line resting on the vertical stab, there should be no chance of delamination from the top driven linkage under high stress (in theory).

The elevator will be live-hinged with kevlar. I had a crappy pair of 8" chinese shears that could kind of cut kevlar but the thin soft blades would do the splits if you didn't clamp them with your hands. Because of the holiday weekend, my local sewing supply store had huge discounts on Fiskars scissors and so I picked up a pair of bent 10" tailoring scissors that cut kevlar like butter Fiskars 10" kevlar scissors

Originally Posted by Aerogance

Thanks Asto. I went ahead and cut a little off the nose to give it a slighly bigger radius. Right now the nose has a 3/16" radius and I may just push it to 1/4". The concern is the nose taking damage on landing if it is too thin.

1 of my reaper fuses had a pointy nose like that, good for those stab in the ground landings....

Short video walkaround of the progress on the DC60:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iWVmzw-e1rg

Quickee update: I had to make new templates for the horizontal stabilizer so I am delayed. I have cut the cores and they are gluing together right now. Later on I will shape the leading edges and round off the corners. I hope to get it in the bag tonight but will likely not get it done until tomorrow.

I also took some measurements and the current fuselage design has a tail moment that is 5 inches less than the last foam prototype. This version was to be the short-coupled test bed. After sufficient testing, the next fuselage will have the final tail moments built in. If I were to change anything at this point, I would have shortened the nose 1" and lengthened the tail boom 1".

Got the tail in the bag, it should be ready to come out tomorrow afternoon. I changed to a 10% supercritical section from the previous 12%. With the amount of glass I have on there, I should land between 10% and 11% t/c.

The stabilizer came out okay but needs a decent amount of sanding to clean up the LE. I had designed my templates for a straight hinge line but in the bagging process the dihedral changed slightly and the hinge line is not straight anymore. I will attempt to fix this but may just make another tail. One tip is also soft from over doing the 3m 77 spray for the LE wrap which prevented the epoxy from saturating the cloth. I can fill and shape this part easily. Overall, the stabilzier looks really good. If I decide to make another one, this one will become a Harbinger 16