Beaufort Gliding Club Hornet GT. (Glider Tug)

14 Febuary 2012

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Our progress has slowed thru January as the summer gliding season is at its peak.
I had one great day out of Bacchus Marsh in the DG400 achieving a 590 km flight going to over 11000ft.
Peter and Gordon also flew the same task in the DG500M, great fun.
The warmer days make it hard to get enthusiastic about working in the workshop when the Cu's are going to the moon... However some small progress has been achieved.
We managed to get some parts to our painter and we have some parts painted with top coat white now.
To get to this stage involved carrying out some remaining sealing jobs and alodine application.
Some parts I had ordered from Aircraft Spruce which included the throttle cable and Gordon has commenced work on making this function correctly.
The Radio antennae selection has been an interesting process. After reviewing various options, Mal recommended the AV-529 RA MILLER AV-529 COM antenna.
We should have an antenna that offered better than 3:1 VSWR because we are using it at the upper end of the A/C band where the spec is going to be worst case.
That's the problem the simple stick types although tweaking might improve it at the 118-122 bands.
A bare stick 1/4 length is always going to be nearly 2:1 because they are 72 ohms at best. The ICOM A210 needs 50 ohms.
Types like the AV-529 offer 1:1.8 VSWR, pay a bit more but why choke a good radio with a poor antenna system.
Other progress included beginning the brake line installation and the running of wiring looms from the engine to the cockpit.
A mount for the engine management computer has also been fabricated.
We also spent some time seeing how the cowl shape might look by cutting some lengths of alloy into strips.
Peter fabricated a template board to aid the nose cowl shape and fit. We need to run some more wiring under the baggage floor and this should be ok.
Mal requested the battery be turned 180 deg as safety feature to keep the terminals as far from structure as possible. We were able to carry this out.
I even managed to get my sons away from the Xbox and do something constructive.
James and Liam enjoyed doing a bit riveting by installing the horizontal tailplane end cap fairings.
They did a great job.
There is more to life than the Xbox!

All for now.
Regards Jack

Man hours to date:

885 hrs