As of 12/13 the airplane build is progressing well. It doesn’t look quite like an airplane yet, but the different assemblies we’re working on are starting to look like something you’d find in an RV-12iS.
The firewall is slowly but surely coming together. We had to work with proseal so the engine exhaust won’t get into the cockpit through the firewall. Proseal is a two part sealant that takes a few days to fully cure. It’s mixed 10 to 1, 10 of the actual white sealant, to 1 of the black hardener. It’s smelly, very sticky, and has the consistency of honey but more viscous. Always wear clothes you don’t care about when working with proseal, that stuff gets everywhere and is impossible to get off without ruining the clothes.
The flaperon mixer was put together. Nifty little piece. This airplane doesn’t actually have ailerons or flaps. Instead it has flaperons. The control surfaces on its wings act as both flaps and ailerons at the same time, hence flaperons. The flaperon mixer mixes the aileron or roll inputs from the stick in the cockpit with the inputs from the flap motor so the flaperons can reflect changes from both and actually act like flaperons. The same team also started deburring parts for, as one student called it, the forward baggage compartment. Well, technically he’s not wrong, humans are baggage, live baggage.
The actual baggage compartment is starting to look like a baggage compartment. The skins are on the ribs, and it’s all attached to the main cockpit bulkhead. Or what will eventually become the bulkhead.
There was also work done on the third longeron and a sideskin. The longeron is a structural long piece that goes on the side of the cockpit. “Third” is not a typo, in the words of a student “one of them was not right.”