geneb

Thanks. Unfortunately, I don't see myself doing this outside my local area. The shipping would be insane and I'd have to charge quite a bit just to make it worth the time required. g.

Here's Saturday's (18Oct14) progress. I wanted to talk about gluing for just a second - an indispensable tool for doing excellent glue joints is a disposable acid brush. You can find them pretty cheaply at places like dollar stores and Harbor Freight (in the USA). Here's an example: http://www.harborfreight.com/36-piece-12-in-horsehair-bristle-acid-shop-brushes-61880.html You put a strip of glue down on the edge of the plywood and use the acid brush to evenly distribute the glue, like so: Keep a slightly damp paper towel or sponge handy to wipe off any excess glue that squeezes out of the joint. You don't need to worry so much about the interior as the glue won't be seen, but you want to make sure you clean it off outside surfaces. Even a thin layer of glue can cause you problems when painting. The next part you're going to install is the bottom horizontal seat brace. This part doesn't have the center core notch that the other horizontal supports have. Once that's glued & pinned in place, you'll install the top horizontal brace last. Note that you want the bottom of the brace to come even with the bottom of the center core as shown. Here's another shot showing the clamps: Once that dries, we'll move on to getting the seat sides installed. The seat sides have a hole that should line up with matching holes in the seat interior. The seat support bar passes through the whole seat back using these holes, so make sure you've got them lined up properly. Another critical thing to note is the alignment of the sides. Set the seat face down on the table when you set the sides in place. The "front" edge of the seat sides MUST be flush with the horizontal interior braces or the seat face won't come into contact with the horizontal bracing, resulting in a weak assembly. I'm using bar clamps to hold the seat side on while it dries. It's a good idea to place scrap material under the clamp faces in order to prevent them from marring the surface you're clamping to. Here's another view of the clamp orientation: The opposite side attaches the same way - make sure the hole is located as shown! When the sides are dry, use a sander to "trim" down the back edges so they're flush with the seat back. Now you can move on to installing the seat back! You want to align the seat back so that the corners of the "shoulder" of the seat matches the corner edge of each side. You'll see that illustrated a bit better in the next photo (circled in green). Once the seat back is done, you can get the head rest parts installed. The install is pretty obvious and the two head rests align pretty well. These are glue-only as there's no room to get the nose of a pin nailer in there. :) When the glue is dried completely, go ahead and install the pitot bar. Take care when you're installing it - make sure it's aligned. Skunk160, weeee're cold! Come sand us! :D g.

*rofl*

Yeah, those poor parts are just sitting on the floor getting cold. :) g.

More progress... All the parts are cut. From here on out I'm going to post some good detail photos so people building one can use it as a guide. Because the material is mostly 12mm, I didn't want to use screws for assembly. Without drilling pilot holes, you risk splitting the material - even with Baltic Birch. If you're making one out of MDF, a screw WILL split the material, even if you drill pilot holes. Bearing that in mind, I decided to use a pin nailer with 18ga pins to do the assembly. You can pick up a pneumatic pin nailer from Harbor Freight for under $30. They have pancake air compressors for around $50. Other countries should have vendors that have similar product for similar prices. In addition to the 18ga brads, I use a good wood glue. I think I'm using Titebond II for this build. You'll also want a number of good clamps to hold things together while you're using the nailer. I'm going to build the ejection seat back first, so I decided to start with the head rest. Here's the parts for that - note that the "pitot" bar won't be installed until much later in the process. The headrest face parts are 6mm, so I used a 1/2" brad for these. The silly thing is, I forgot to change out the brads when I was done, so ALL the parts you'll see in this post were put together with those 1/2" brads. This means that about 2mm of brad is actually sticking into the part I nailed through. *facepalm* The only reason it didn't fall apart is due to the clamps. :) The headrest supports have a left and a right side - so make sure you don't make two of the same side! After you get the 6mm faces attached to the large vertical supports, go ahead and add the small supports to the opposite side as shown. Please pay attention to the orientation of that smaller support! The angle and shape will match the larger vertical support. Once you've got them both done, set them aside to dry. We're moving on to the seat back frame now. The seat back is going to be assembled going from the back to the front - we'll build it up on the seat back. Grab the two seat spine stringers and attach them to the seat back as shown below: Make sure that the outside surfaces of the spine parts are flush with the outside, vertical edge of the seat back. (this interface is indicated by the red arrow) You'll also want to make sure to have the bottom of the angled cut in the spine parts are even with the top edge of the seat back. The alignment point is highlighted by the red square in the above image. Next, you'll want to install the middle horizontal seat support. There's no room to get the nose of a nailer into the interior space defined by the spine box, so you'll need to just glue & clamp it. I recommend using a larger clamp to hold this horizontal support in place until the glue dries. Also, make sure it's square to the seat back by using a small speed square or regular square. The horizontal support bottom should be flush with the bottom of the shorter of the spine stringers. Unfortunately, I don't have a photo of this, but I can cobble something together if anyone wants clarification. Same step, both spine stringer clamps in place: The last thing I did was to install the seat spine cap: The installation location and alignment is pretty self-evident. :) Because none of the parts for the project were originally named by Jedi, I'm going to stick my own labels on things. It'll make sense to me and I'll try to keep consistent across the build process. Until next time! g.

Ahh, excellent news hegykc! The Hornet fans will be happy. :) g.

The choice they made on the Slew control wasn't really a bad one. A real slew control is NOT a cheap thing. I've not torn down the grip on my Warthog, but there may not be enough room inside the grip to do a good simulation of the slew control (the button mounted atop a stick post instead of the stick post protruding through the button). Doesn't the F/A-18 throttle quadrant have finger lifts under the handles like the F-15 does? Excellent job on the design though! g.

Thanks for the reminder! :) All the parts are cut with the exception of two 6mm parts that have to be re-cut because the toolpath was generated incorrectly. You're going to be sanding fuzzies for quite a while. :) g.

Ahh, good call! Thanks! g.

The heads are too "domed" for a roofing nail. Do you have one that's not been used you can post a photo of? tnx! g.

Ha! You know why there's a face curtain attached to that thing? So you can hide behind it in shame it as you abandon that poor jet you broke. :D g.

Martin-Baker Pretender, BE GONE! :D g.

Probably when someone decides it's a good idea to throw fat stacks of cash at me for my hobbies. :) g.

Not a thing. :) I only use it for my hobby related projects. g.

I'm using a model very similar to this: http://www.centralvacuummotor.com/Lighthouse/LH6407-13.JPG I don't recall the exact model # though. I'm using two of them in parallel (they're not designed for series operation). The version I'm using is 120v. g.

"Two weeks." :D g.

I was asked by a forum member if I could cut a Wharthog for him - here's pics of that process! I use a home-built vacuum system to hold the parts to the spoil board on the ShopBot. The blue tape is there covering the slots in parts in order to prevent air leaks. At the start of the job I'm pulling 5in/hg and by the time it's done, I'm down to 1in/hg or a bit less due to air leaks caused by the part outlines. As you can see below, I've got blue tape all over the place. I was loosing vacuum pretty badly - it had fallen to about .75in/hg after cutting out the interior of the ejection seat back. I'm running around trying to cap all the holes in the board when I notice that the hose connected to the vacuum system had partially kinked. It jumped up to about 3in/hg when I straightened it out. :) Below is a shot of the finished sheet #3. Here's the stack of all the 12mm parts. I'll run the 6mm & 18mm parts later on - I ran these yesterday and was suffering noise fatigue by the end of the day. The vacuum hold-down I use is VERY loud. I checked the sound level yesterday with a db meter and the motors for the vac system were hitting 82db at about 12 feet distance. Even with hearing protection it's hard to be around for a full day. I'll post more pics as I cut them. g.

I like the lightening holes you put in the ribs. It looks very nice! What did you use for the fake rivet heads? g.

Nice job! g.

So theoretically, you'll be ready about the time the Oculus Rift DK2 or Half Life 3 ship? *grins, ducks & runs* g.

Ah, ok. The board wouldn't even need to live in the stick necessarily, especially if there was a stick extension involved. g.

I would love a KG-13. If those chips are just standard parts and not programmed micro-controllers, it would be pretty easy to develop a schematic and produce blank board for people to solder up. g.

New Zealand dumped all their A-4Ks at fire sale prices a number of years ago. A friend has been working on a nice cockpit for the A-4 for quite a while. It'll be great if it makes it into DCS. g.

That's some excellent work Sokol1. Thanks for the link. Did he ever provide the files as DXF? g.

Thanks a lot southernrebel. This is goiing to make a Kiwi that misses his A-4s very happy. :D g.