Saturday, July 28, 2012

Saturday, July 28, 2012 Back to the Airport with Bob Frolund

Bob Frolund is a friend from church who has shown interest in the Jetwing project, and has wanted to go “…look at your toy…” as he told me. So this Saturday after the mens’ group meeting at the church, we went out to the airport. Since he is mechanically minded and very resourceful, I told him that there were several things for which I needed advice. I want to be able to get the Jetwing set up to fly when I am by myself, and there are three things that currently prevent this. I need to be able to: 1) fold up and deploy the wing without demounting the wing from the carriage, 2) find some way once the wing is folded to control it when I am wheeling the Jetwing out of and into the hanger, and 3) be able to steer the plane by controlling the nosewheel.
After getting the hanger door raised, which was no mean feat, we wheeled the aircraft out. Keeping the wing mounted on the carriage, I lowered the control bar to the ground, and we spread the wing and tried to tension it. As was the usual case, I could not get the wing fully deployed and tensioned. The eye came within about 5 inches of the tensioner bracket. Between us, we still could not get it to reach. Finally, Bob detached the Velcro overlap of the wing fabric to expose the crossbars. By pulling directly on the main crossbar, the wing expanded all the way. So the conclusion was that I simply did not have the leverage to pull hard enough to get the wing to expand fully with it attached to the carriage. I was very concerned about not forcing anything and possibly damaging it, but it seemed that there was no inordinate stress on the wing structure by doing this. Bob’s suggestion was to attach a ratchet strap or some kind of come-along to the tensioning cable to give it more muscle than I could manage. So one issue was resolved.
As we were working around the hanger and the plane, I showed Bob the Cessna tow bar that had been used by John’s 172 but was overlooked by the buyer when the airplane was sold. I said that I would like to modify the bar to work with the Jetwing but couldn’t figure out how. He took a quick look and pointed out that there seemed to be a natural place to attach the tow bar on the nosewheel bracket already. Sure enough, for some reason I had completely missed the attach point that had probably been designed on the nosewheel bracket for this very purpose. I guess no one should accuse me of being all that observant of the obvious!
We turned our attention to how to control the wings when there were in the folded position. Bob saw immediately what the need was and said he could fabricate a simple bracket out of scrap 2x4’s or 1x4’s with casters on the bottom that would wrap around the wing so it would not drag on the ground. Amazingly, the next day at church, Bob informed me that he had built the bracket and had brought it with him that morning. What a guy!
So the day with Bob was extremely productive. This in spite of two very bad knees that make it hard for him to get around. He is looking forward to replacement surgery later this year to resolve that problem.

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