April 4, 2002 - The Eagle has wings! Well, they are in the garage at least. The wings are finally here. They are made of carbon fiber and are in 2 sections. The inboard section is mostly complete, with the outer spar to go and the outer skin to be assembled later. The lower picture shows the outboard wing parts in the hangar where the project will be completed. The long wings mean needing a larger area to work down the road. We have a 52X52 foot hangar for that. Now, if there are any problems getting parts in the future, they won't be big ones, since the wings are hard to duplicate. Europa has sold about 900 airplanes, but one can never be careful enough these days with the Glassair fiasco.
April 20, 2002 - Now the very careful process of setting the wing angles begins. There are 3 angle to be set - dihedral, incidence and sweep. In this picture, the angle of dihedral is set to 2.4 degrees - with the help of a digital level. By the way, when the airplane wing structure was tested at Europa, the wing was placed upside down and loaded to 10.87 g's. To put that into perspective, it was loaded with the equivalent weight of 2 of my Nissan trucks - 5500 pounds!!!!
April 27, 2002 - The airplane will eventually have a 48 foot wing span. That can't be done in a one car garage, so it is now located at the Minden Airport in the 52 X52 foot hangar. Here it is after a couple of days in the hangar with both wings installed. There is much more rigging work to go, but it is getting more and more like an airplane. The airplane in the foreground is our 1963 Twin Comanche. The other airplane is the tenant's Bonanza.
April 28, 2002 - The focus of this stage is the panel and electrical system - and fuel system. Here, the panel nas been powered up and has the addition of the propeller control and the variometer on the right side. The control sticks have push to talk on both and the left stick has a trim switch. The pitch trim can be controlled from either the left stick or a toggle switch on the trim panel just ahead of the brake lever. There is a selector switch there, as well as a red guarded trim power cut out switch.
May 17,2002 - Here the wings are mounted and the dihedral angle is set. The brackets to mount the outriggers have been bonded in and the outriggers are mounted. The airplane is getting closer to being able to sit on its own wheels - but not quite yet...
May 22, 2002 – Above is a vital function. There are steel plates bonded into layers of fiberglass in the wing root rib and after cure, a hole is drilled and a threaded tap is used to creat a threaded hole to mount a 1/2 inch diameter steel pin. The hole must be drilled exactly straight, or the wings will not enter the aircraft correctly. There is a pin at the front of the wing root rib and one at the rear. These are used to set the angle of incidence. That angle must be exactly the same for both wings, otherwise the airplane will have a tendency to roll one way or the other. This is the rigging process that took about 3 weeks to complete. I spent several days measuring and about 1 hour installing. There are sockets bonded and bolted to the side of the fuselage.
