Workig with Titanium (Mar. 18th, 2007)

My titanium order arrived last week. I ordered from Titanium Joe. The round bars for the main gear was not available in the specified diameter of 1,125". Instead I ordered it in 1.3" diameter. So I have to turn down the dimeter for 4.4 millimeters - not much but I wonder how this material behaves on the lathe. If turning is too difficult then I will reduce the diameter only on the top and bottom part where the rod slips into the engine mount and into the wheel hub. This will provide another safety advantage because the rod then cannot slip through the engine mount in case of a hard landing when the bolt breaks.

The main gear legs are -very- heavy! I thought titanium is a light alloy, but not so. Next to the engine the gear legs are the heaviest part on the Sonex.. Taking the high price of these two rods into account I wonder if a carbonfibre gear would have been the better solution - for a fraction of the weight.

I already drilled one hole into the tailwheel spring. Drilling titanium is similar like drilling stainless. Titanium is a very bad heat conductor so the point where the tool cuts will overheet very soon.

Baggage Compartment (Mar. 4th, 2007)

This weekend I made a baggage compertment just behind the seats (I know CG issue.... this is only intended for light stuff like maps, headsets etc. It's probably lighter than the 'Tony Spicer' solution).

This looked like a smal&easy project for in-between, but step-drilling all this holes took quite a lot of time. I perforated the box with lots of 20mm diameter holes. The bottom and the lower 5cm are solid sheet metal to prevent small items dropping into the tailcome. There is also a divider in the middle to prevent things slipping from side to side. Another advantage of the divider is that I can put my item on the right side (and reach them more easily from the left seat)

The box is only clecoed now and I'm unsure about if I should make the box removable. If I'll rivet the box onto the longerons then the rear fuselage is almost inaccessible for service (even without this box some locations are very hard to reach. Taking the box out is impossible because it is the same width as the fuselage. Only way to deinstall it is removing a side panel (side panel of the box of course - not the aircraft ;-).

Total Eclipse of the Moon (Mar. 3rd, 2007)

Using my Minolta 10x zoom camera I could take this pic around midnight from a total eclipse of the moon. I have no tripod used, just leaned against a house-wall (and had some Trollinger red-wine taken before which to common belief gives a steady hand).

At the top part there's some remaining sunlight. I waited to take also the moment when the moon wanders out again of the earth's shadow, but unfortunately just at that moment clouds began obstructing the sky.