Wednesday, June 23, 2010 Carriage Pieces to Machine Shop

Today I plan to deliver the tubing and instructions to Victoria Repair so they can cut and drill the carriage pieces. This is the last step before I will be able to put the carriage together. There will be much to go after that, but this will be a big step, psychologically as well as actually, because I will actually have the Jetwing basically built. There will be other work, including the throttle cabling and electrical hook-up, propeller installation, and general engine check-out. But getting past this step will be huge. I measured everything out meticulously and gave Victoria Repair a list of all the carriage components, side rails, uprights, side brace tube, and bent front downtube. The side rails and uprights are sleeved, so hopefully they will do that correct. I am doing a slight modification to the uprights; I’m going to add a full-length inner sleeve rather than duplicating the original design of three sections of sleeving. Since the wing and engine hang on these pieces, I don’t think it’s a bad idea to have full-length inner sleeves like the side rails. The added weight will be minimal. We’ll see how Victoria Repair does with these components.