A Good Idea? (Sept.22nd, 2002)

I've almost all of the tail and wing surfaces ready for inspection (and then going to be closed).

I always looked for better ways to improve this tendious polishing job (almost 50 hours went into polishing 'till now and the wings are not started yet). So I wet-sanded one aileron skin before polishing. The brilliant (I thought) idea behind was to 'smooth out' the grain structure of the aluminum surface. Polishing should then proceed much faster (I thought). Now, three days of polishing (only for this little shitty aileron skin), half a jar of Nuvite polish and several square meter of cotton cloth later I have learned another thing. This sanded (I used very fine 2000grid wet sanding paper) surface is very hard to almost impossible to polish. The polishing compound bonds to the surface structure (yes, there's still a structure) and is ~very~ hard to get a mirror-like shine.

I'm thinking now of painting the wings. Painting, compared to polishing takes much less effort and requires much less maitenance afterwards.

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German Experimental Summer Fly-In in Speyer (Sept. 1st, 2002)

This weekend our national experimental fly-in was held in Speyer. I presented the "Stratomaster" line of digital instruments, for which I'm a dealer now. What else of interest I discovered:

1. Mr. Claren developed (and now sells) an highly modified type 1 VW. The engine is geared, has electronic ignition and fuel injection and delivers 120 HP takeoff power. The engine powers his canard.

2. Met this man (Mr. Otto Zeides) who developed a very interesting prop:

Here you can see that the two ends of the prop which have different angles of attack. If one already stalls the other still delivers thrust. This design should improve both take-off and curise performance. Probably I'll give it a try at the Type 4.