December 3, 2003

Ever played a computer game called Neverwinter Nights? Don't, it's addicting! Between that, the upcoming holidays, and taking my annual Anniversary trip with the wife, it's a been a few days since I was able to get any work done for anything more than 20 minutes. So, back to it...

My wife stole (she says 'borrowed'...like I'll ever see it again!) my SLR digital so I had to fall back on my first digital camera (the one she usually uses). It appears to work pretty well (the SLR might have been just a tad bit of overkill, but it's what I had on hand) and it has macro built in. The problem that she had with it seems to be a battery issue, such as both sets of Ni-mh batteries are toast. Throw some Duracell's in, and it works fine. She'll probably try to steal it back once she sees how the macro mode works, but I'll worry about that when it happens.

Below is the VS skeleton cleco'd together. I think this is after I bent the flanges where the ribs attach to the rear spar, but can't be sure. The flange angles on the ribs for attaching to the front spar were nigh on perfect, but the one's for attaching to the rear spar weren't anywhere close to being square, so I squared `em up.

Van's says the ribs only have to be straight enough to be able to cleco the skin in place. As you can see here, they were close enough (although some finagling was necessary). Next I need to flip the thing over and cleco the other side, but I'm not happy with the thought of it sitting on the cleco's. Soooo, I want to build a support of some sort to cradle the VS and hold it off the workbench. I might be able to leave each side flopping loose while working on the other, but that just feels sloppy, so I won't do it. I'm trying to decide whether to just keep it flat, and build supports to help hold it off the table, or to build a cradle to work vertically.