The fuselage mould is ready, as is the stamp for the canopy. Both came out very well – no air pockets or broken edges on the mould. Both the mould and the stamp are now polished. The canopy stamp is sent off to a friend who will produce the canopies for us. Our paintmaster Andi yesterday spray painted the fuselage mould with white 2K paint. Tomorrow we hope to build the first fuselage – I cannot imagine a better christmas present :-).

Time to start work on the fuselage mould. Our shaper Richie kindly also prepared the separation plane (Trennebene). Getting it to fit exactly around the fuselage mould was a full morning of work still. After that the fuselage mould was centered exactly into the separation plane (a laser really helps with that), and the space between the plug and plane filled with paste. Georg then spent a few hours waxing both the plug and the plane. On Tuesday we then built the first half of the fuselage mould. First a coat of moulding resin, reinforced with a few glass fibers. Then several layers of glass. Since we will only be building three or four fuselages out of this mould, we’re not overdoing it on the amount of glass (160-280-280-280-160, with two extra layers of 280 aroung the edges).

At the same time we also build the stamp for the canopy. A plug was prepared by our shaper Richie. Georg made a glass mould around that plug. We then coated the mould with a few layers of moulding resin, and then filled it with a mixture of ground shells (used for bird cages 🙂 ) and resin, as well as a piece of foam in the middle.

While the resin on the mould and stamp is curing, Georg will add the feet to the first half of the mould.

I’ve yet to decide what “nationality” I will be giving my Orlik – I’m hesitating between a Swiss or a Czech registration number. In any case, it will definitely need the nice Orlik logo on the nose. I’ve found many different versions of the logo on pictures on the web. Here is the result of scanning and editing the logo from what I think was the nices version, using the excellent Silhouette Studio software. Click on the picture for a PDF version, should somebody need this.

While our shaper Richie was busy finishing the fuselage plug, our designer Georg has started work on the wings. The wings will be built using our usual technique: foam core, carbon joiner and main spar, carbon inserts, abachi and glass coverage, before spray painting the entire wing. As we want to go for a light-weight glider, we will be saving on the thickness of the wing joiner (using spare “old” wing joiners that were left over from earlier projects well over a decade ago), as well as on the amount of carbon going into the wing. And of course we’re doing six control surfaces, no airbrakes and a modern thin wing profile.

We’ve spent a few days cutting foam. Georg, the super fast-builder as always, then went full-speed ahead and built his wings in little over a week. They’re ready to go to the paintshop, and weigh little over 800gr each (for a 4.6m wingspan aircraft!). Andi and I hope to start building our wings together next week.

Our shaper, Richie, finished the plug! I’m always amazed at how he pulls this off, investing many hours of work sanding, covering with glass, filler, sanding etc. The result however looks awesome – as always. Now comes the hard work of making the moulds as well as the stamp for the canopy. Our designer Georg now has the plug and is preparing it so that we can start making the moulds shortly.

When we started this project we decided that building “scale” was less important than building a performant glider (we build our planes for flying – a lot!). The original VT-16 was built with a combination of ribs and foam, at the time a very modern construction. We decided to take this a bit further and build our Orlik with different techniques, including a modern design high performance wing and going for a very light weight glider. As the fuselage is pretty long and big, with only a short nose, that means we need to save every gramme we can on the tail. Hence the decision to build a light weight Balsa/Carbon/Plywood elevator – not the standard foam core/carbon inserts/glass coverage. Our designer Georg made a pretty nifty combination of those materials, allowing an elevator that’s sufficiently robust, but should be around 115-120 grammes once finished. Following Georg’s design and example I built mine. It was more work than planned – especially having to cut and saw all pieces by hand – but the result if pretty cool. 107grammes total weight, before covering.

The inner four ribs are plywood. The wing spar and trailing edge have a layer of carbon epoxied in, in addition to balsa and plywood. The hinges are glass fiber, joiners carbon and 2mm steel, the rest is balsa.

Also note that the original Orlik had an all-moving tailplane. We’re not great fans of such tailplanes so decided to go for a standard elevator setup.

Our shaper, Richie, has started working on the plug for the VT-16 Orlik. The frames for the fuselage plug are for the first time computer designed and laser-cut – until now we’ve always done this by hand. He’s finished filling the gaps between the frames with foam and done a first rough cut. Now the long and difficult job of sanding the whole thing into shape starts. In the meanwhile Georg has started work on designing the wing. We’ll be using the same landing gear as for the Urupema – the necessary parts have been ordered and we hope to cut 3mm glass sheets for the sides of the landing gear soon.