OK now you are making me feel old....did the exact same thing when building my Olympic II. Took an old door from our offices and "snuck" a ceiling tile out of the maintenance area....

Karl S wrote:
> Lyle,
>
> Back in the day I took an old door and put it on some work horses. I went
> down to Home Hardware and picked up a ceiling tile. The opposite side is
> nice and flat and the door provided a good workplace to keep it flat. You
> can put pins in the ceiling tile over-and-over again to keep ribs in place
> etc etc. I built my first Bird of Time (BOT) on that setup...worked great.
>
> My 0.02 cents.

Lyle,

Back in the day I took an old door and put it on some work horses. I went down to Home Hardware and picked up a ceiling tile. The opposite side is nice and flat and the door provided a good workplace to keep it flat. You can put pins in the ceiling tile over-and-over again to keep ribs in place etc etc. I built my first Bird of Time (BOT) on that setup...worked great.

My 0.02 cents.

Karl:
Hey! Good job on the tow hook! Using carbon rods & tubes makes sense for strength & weight savings.

What are your ideas about the large build surface?

Cheers!
Lyle

Lyle,

Here is a tow hook I made out of a bike spoke...cost $1.50

Also, to save weight on the three piece wing I am swapping brass tube and medal rod to carbon tube/rod combo that will be much lighter and argueably stronger...Flight Craft has good seletion so I will come back with sizing/cost for anyone interested.

Thanks Lyle,

Nice to see some converstion started on the thread here. Also, we have Bernard providing us the cool "Thermal Hunter" logo in all our kits (see below) and some addtional videos on what the three piece wing will look like coming from Michael Berends which has done up an early demo build of the plane. He will also be do some flight videos this week...whichI will share on his "YouTube" Channel to keep space down here (no embedded videos here Lyle and Tom!)

Morning!
I found some information on tow hooks for the T-Hunter. Because we only use the light hi-starts with a max of 4 kgs of line tension (8.8 lbs) and the also due to the light weight of our sailplane, a 2mm hook will do the job. I have attached some examples for 3 & 4mm hooks, the concepts would be the same for a 2 mm hook as well.

Now with regards to the wing option. Our T-Hunter as it is designed uses a one piece wing. Bernard has come up with a three piece wing option that requires the use of small sections of brass tube and steel rod. Bernard indicated you should be able to pick these items up and probably cost an extra $2-3. I have asked for a source to acquire these items. Here's the catch, the three piece wing option will add an additional 40 gms to the weight of the wing. The single piece wing will be bring the weight down closer to the projected 450 gm design goal.

Something more to think about.

Lyle

Karl:
Okey Dokey! Let's give 'er a go! As an update, I am presently conversing with Bernard regarding the wing options. I will issue a report as soon as I have all the information. Bernard has also indicated he is looking into a source for tow hooks and wing hold down hardware. Also, he indicated he has finished with his final engineering and modifications to the T-Hunter. I will load up a picture of the latest plans as soon as I receive a higher res version.

I stopped off at Paris Junction Hobbies this afternoon to enquire about covering. They have a good selection of colours of Parklite covering manufactured by Hanger 9. I picked up two rolls of bright yellow and light blue to be used on my T-Hunter, to honour the people of the Ukraine in my own small way.

I enquired if they sold larger rolls and the answer was yes they could order 10 M rolls but the price was an astonishing $133 USD!! I bought the two rolls at $25.99 each, less our 10% discount, plus taxes. So I am starting to collect the items that I will need for the build.

My only question at the moment is the building surface. We need something that will hold the entire length of the fuselage which is around 1.2 meters...or about 48 inches. I don't have anything that large and was wondering what others were going to use? We have some time, so the more we get our ducks in order, the better our chances for a speedy build!

Cheers!
Lyle