It’s been well over 6 months since I last reported any progress on the project. Time certainly gets away!
I’ve been continuing to work on the Viper’s fuselage albeit very sporadically. My attention has been distracted by other projects and real life. We’re now in the Summer months in my part of the world and my garage once again turns into a sauna between the hours of 10am and 4pm. As keen as I am at the moment to get stuck into the build, it’s just no fun at all to be in the garage when it’s so hot and sticky!
I’ve been primarily concentrating on getting the nose section properly fitted and secured to the main fuselage, as well as reinforcing the majority of riveted joins. This has presented a few engineering challenges for me, as I originally had intended for the nose section to be separable from the main fuselage, for transport purposes.
However, as the build progressed, I changed the design to secure the nose section, and make the fuselage able to separate from the tri-engine rear section instead. By doing it this way I’ll have a 5.5 metre fuselage and 4 metre engine section to accommodate for transport purposes.
In terms of the engineering/build – this has required me to include a number of additional structural components.
I’ve also been including structural components for the mounting of the front landing gear. The primary strut for the landing gear is a 100 mm x 5 mm galvanised section of pipe. It won’t be retractable but I am planning on designing it so that it can be made to go lower to allow the fuselage to be more easily moved around.
The area that has most obviously changed is the addition of the top panel on the forward fuselage, in front of the cockpit:
That’s about it for the moment. I’m hoping some cooler weather over Christmas / New Year to get a bit more done.
PS- For anyone who hasn’t seen the Youtube clip of the assembly of the X-wing for the Rogue One red carpet premiere, well worth a look. A thing of beauty – very inspiring and motivating for me.
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Project Colonial Viper Blog 