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Tailwind Tales
Autumn winds are blowing over Lodrino Airfield and here we go again with unbroken enthusiasm: This time it will be a Tailwind W 10.
2001
December 1 . We are almost done with rib building and could start with the shaping of the two spars. As you can see we are quite on schedule.
December 23 . We could lay out our right wing with all the ribs in place and take some pictures for documentation and may be we can put one o these on our homepage as soon as they are developed and scanned.
January 9. We could glue the ribs to the spars as you can see on our most recent picture.
February 10. We finished the structure of our right wing and it weighs 13.5 kg, which is not bad at all. Next weekend we will take some pictures in front of Heli TV's hangar maybe with some snow in the background.
March 3. Today we started with our left wing aligning the ribs on both spars.( see the two pictures above )
April 8. The second wing structure is almost done. It looks like we are on schedule.The next step will be the flaps and ailerons, but still have to decide which way to build them; metallic frame with Poly Fiber covering or aluminum sheeted.
April 14. Fotosession outdoors, haevy winds, with both wingstructures aligned and test pilots Gregi and Guido ready to take off with the original joy stick.
June 9. Wingstructures almost ready to be covered with birch plywood 2mm
July 24 - 30 Airventure Oshkosh and our Guido Tresoldi is there
looking for a ride with one of the TW's which are on the flightline ( Jim Clement, Rick and Cindy Crosslin, Dennis Flamini etc )
August 24 Mr W?Et a TW builder from Germany came to visit us. We finally recieved the tubings from Wicks USA and could start with the tailfeathers
October 7 . We now are putting together all the tailfeathers tubings after having built the wood jigs. Pretty soon we will be TIG welding.So things are moving again. Last friday Walter Critchlow from London Ontario Canada came to see us in our shop. We could show him what we are doing and he could give us quite a few hints having he himself rebuilt a W 8 about 4 years ago.
December 15. We are almost done with Tig welding the tailfeathers, flaps and ailerons. Hope to start assembling the fuselage beginning next year.
2002
March 16. We had some problems with webspawner but I think these are fixed now. Meanwhile we bought an engine: Lycoming 0-320 with more tha 400 hours to go. A lot of welding has been done and both bottom wing skins are in place and look just fine.
April 20. Pitot tube and inspection holes in place in the left wing which has been definitly closed in its central section today.
May 29. Both wings are now completly skinned , leading edges sanded , flaps and ailerons adapted to the trailing spar. They weigh 30 kg each which is quite a good result.
July 14. We finished our left wing laminating one layer of 105g/m2 glass cloth at 45° as a protection and may be a little additional reinforcement. We hope to start with the fuselage construction pretty soon after our EAS Fly In here in Lodrino which took place during the weekend of august 15 - 17. We had beautiful weather and about 120 airplanes mostly homebuilts showed up from all over Europe. Unfortunately the announced TW from France couldn't make it.
September 22. Summer holidays are over so we finally could start with the fuselage jig and the trimming of all the different 4130 tubes. Once everything is ready we will bring the whole set to Claro where our friend Carlo will do the welding, Pretty soon we will have to order the gear and motor mount from Jerry Hey in the States. Our rookie Danilo is already getting some stick time.
November 10. As you can see on our new picture things are moving pretty fast . It took Carlo only a couple of hours to tak weld both fuselage sides and so we are ready to build up the hole cage.
December 20. The fuselage structure is almost ready to be welded and Jerry Hey just did send us a picture with our motor mount in the jig ready to be welded.
2003
March 1. The main structure of the fuselage is welded. We recieved the gear legs from Jerry Hey but the motor mount is still on his way somewhere between the States and Lodrino airport. Today Lele did a beautiful job with the epoxy primer spray gun on the tailfeathers. Meanwhile also the enginermount finally arrived. Very nice job! Thanks Jerry.
July 16. The last couple of months went by so fast I almost forgot to keep this report up to date. Of course we made some progress with our project. The fuselage is almost finished with tailfeathers and enginemount in place.
October 10. After a very hot summer we finally could align the wings with the fuselage and fix them with the struts. It almost looks like a real areoplane now, doesn't it ! Pretty soon we will be ready for the static stress test with 1250 kg on each wing. Will it hold or do we have to start everything from scratch?
November 8.Today we almost made our first unofficial " roll out ". Only heavy snow fall kept us from pushing the bird outside Heli TV's hangar.
November 22. We finally passed the stress load test of the wings. 950 kg on each one with only 4 cm deflection at the tips.
2004
May 1 . Quite a few months went by since my last update. But we didn't sleep. The new picture with fuselage and wings put together sitting on the gear speaks for itself.
July 4. Today was our big day . We had our Official Roll Out with over 100 people attending and the presence of 15 planes such as a P51 Mustang, 2 Glasairs, 1 Glastar, 1 One Design, 1 Alpha , 1 Votec etc,
2005
Feb. 13. It's quite a while since my last update. Of course we made some progress but we should do better. We recieved the Madden cowling and most of the fuselage structures including the alu stringers are done.
June 11. Meanwhile we have powder coated the fuselage and most of the metallic components and primed the wings with IRSA white DD- Lack. The fuel tank is also almost done.
June 25. We had some fine visitors from USA : Bob Danner and Dave and Jane Magaw.
July 20. Stress loading test of all movable surfaces (rudders, ailerons and flaps) in presence of H.P Baumann and H. Anderegg our official supervisors from EAS. Some modifications have to be done before we run a second test later this year.
2006
January 7. All the moving surfaces are now covered with Aviolene and doped with the IRSA system. Doorskins are now dimpled and clecoed. Meanwhile we also finished the fuselage and all the functional stearing parts according to the suggestions of our EAS supervisors. Daniel Egger a ETH Zürich student did an excellent bachelor thesis on our W 10 wing under the supervision of Eric Cataldi.
March 28 2006. The instrument panel is taking shape. It is our Guido Tresoldi who is in charge of it. Also the side panels and the lateral windows with the aluframes are almost done.
July 1. Big surprise! Last week two big Fedex parcels from Sacramento USA were delivered with guess what inside: a Felix prop customized by Graig Catto and a J. Clement spinner. Thanks a lot Dave, Jane and Bob. We were so happy that yesterday we had to do a little roll out with foto session. In the last couple of weeks we started covering the fuselage following J. Clement's helpful suggestions.
August 15, 2006 Guido Tresoldi and your webmaster are back from Baraboo and Oshkosh. What an experience !!
Bob Danner and Dave Magaw gave us several rides in their beautiful TW's. They go so fast and so smooth we couldn't believe it. These were our first rides in a TW. I was given even the opportunity to fly into Oshkosh with Dave and other 4 TW's with Jim Clement leading the crowd. At a certain point Oshkosh Tower said: "slow down TW's you're too fast"
We took about 1000 pictures of the 15 TW's attending Baraboo.
Full of enthusiasm we went ahead with our construction. First thing we have redone the stress load test of the ailerons and flaps after the earlier mentioned modifications, and this time everything worked fine.
November 2. Meanwhile we cut to shape the Lexan windshield and side windows, made the front floor panels, covered the top, the bottom and the right side of the fuselage with Aviolene, cut out the inpection holes for the walking beam and the stabhorn on the right side. After glueing the cowl halfs together we added the lips on the lower half and trimmed both cowls to a good fit.
December 23, 2006. The fuselage is covered with aviolene and 7 coats of IRSA dope. the belly exhaust canal fits beautifully. Pretty soon we should install the panel.
2007
August 17, 2007 More than half a year went by since my last report. Meanwhile we adapted the cowling and we are still working on the panel in its latest version. Again this month of June we could show our work in progress to some visitors from the States namely Jane and Dave Magaw and from Italy Shahar Tsabari.
2008
September. Another year went by. Our bird makes slow but steady progress. The panel is now finished and all instruments including a Dynon DA 10 and a moving map GPS are installed . Engine is connecte and exhaust pipes are in place. The fuselage got its au protective dope coat. Most electrical systems are in place.
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