FTS Projects

AchimEngels · 18 April 2003, 01:37 AM

And finally just for fun: some images taken during construction:

Happy Easter to all of you!

AchimEngels · 26 April 2003, 11:43 PM

We have finished the top cones of the rudder spars yesterday.

Things are coming together. Still to be done are the rudder control horns and the hinges. Mike Maddeford is presently working on our tool, the rudder horns bender, so it won´t take very much longer that we can bring these pieces to the construction ispector and then finally assemble the rudder and the elevator.

Enjoy

AchimEngels · 13 May 2003, 12:35 PM

Hello all!

The last thing we did was a complete set of 30! Fokker control horns. These go with the elevator, the rudder and ailerons and torque tubes of our two aircraft. And then there is one spar set left.

This was the most complicated and difficult part so far since it is a drop shaped cone that carries a bracket for the attachment of the tunbuckles on each side.

Here are some images of some of these.

Hope you like seeing it!

Enjoy!

Achim

AchimEngels · 14 May 2003, 10:21 PM

Ups! Did I say 30 (thirty?). I guess I was confusing this with the number of arms of these horns *

Of course these have been 15 only.

Anyway Here is a picture of another complete set I did for my friend *Langdon Badger of Australia. *Unfortunately Langdon is not a participant of this forum. Otherwise he could tell you about his very accurate Fokker D.VIII repro he is working on.

He is very busy with very detailed research and we have been discussing things for a long time. He kindly helped me some times and these horns I did in return for him and his project.

The three "complete" ones go for the rudder and elevator, the ones cut to half are not damaged *

. Fokker used to use these at the torque tube welded to at a certain angle to activate the ailerons. Therefore these have a larger bracket, too.

Enjoy!

Achim

wolfenbill · 16 May 2003, 10:45 AM

Beautiful weld work Achim.

AchimEngels · 16 May 2003, 12:07 PM

Thank you Wolfenbill.

How do you like these?

This was what I did today, although it is not finished completely yet *

Enjoy!

Achim

AchimEngels · 21 May 2003, 10:07 AM

Hello Again *;D

Today I have been working on the first experiments to get the Fokker hinges done for our rudder and elevator.

The tool I created to press the hinge straps broke two times. Obviously I underestimated the force needed to get these done, although it is "just" a 2mm steel sheet *???

Finally I figured it out and here are the first results. They may look a little shaggy, but as I said it was just a experiment so far. For this reason they go with our experimental rudder.

Here they are.

These are the parts. There is a brass bush inserted into the strap that goes over the rudder spar.

This one shows the whole thing attached at the experimental rudder we do before we do ours.

Enjoy!

Achim

AchimEngels · 26 May 2003, 08:23 AM

Now that the hinges have been finished and the rudder horns as well we have been able to put together one first rudder today.

Of course I could not resists to assemble it with the tail fin.

There is one problematic thing I noted though: it appears that my background fabric is too small for such large pieces *

Here we go:

Now that this test rudder and fin turned out quite well, we can soon go and do the one for our aircraft and following this we will get Wulffo´s rudder done. Hopefully this will take place within the next two weeks.

After that we will go on with the fuselage interieur stuff and then the fuselage itself.

Taking shape, doesn´t it? *

Enjoy!

Achim

AchimEngels · 29 May 2003, 08:07 AM

This is the experimental tailplane fitted together for the first time.

Enjoy!

Achim

wolfenbill · 30 May 2003, 12:33 PM

I've learned a lot just from looking at your work. Excellent attention to detail.