Sunday, November 5, 2023

LCP

 A new acronym has been invented and it's all over the place: LCP - Laser Cut Parts. Essentially Vans needed to speed up production and went for the unprecedented technique (in aircraft production) of laser cutting holes all the way up to the correct dimension.

When done correctly, this poses no more deterioration to the material than punched holes (all the way up to the correct dimension), according to Van's. This is probably correct because it is hard to think of a worse method to make a hole than to punch a hole, where 10% of the thickness is a clean cut, and 90% is literally torn out due to shear forces, leaving residual stresses at max around the hole.

However, the trajectory of the laser is of outmost importance, and the subcontractors did this the wrong way, leaving a large heat affected zone at one specific point. When dimpled and/or riveted, these holes have a tendency to crack. We don't want cracks in our airplanes.

All about this can be read at Van's site. Another thing that can be found there is a very unfortunate message by Van. He literally say the company is de facto bankrupt. They have run out of money, and a new team will lead the company in a transitional phase to get it back on it's feet.

Why this happened is many faceted apparently, I have no internal info, but I think it's safe to say that Corona is the main reason. This ended up in Vans selling kits at a loss, in the degree they even managed to produce kits due to lead times of materials and equipment that have affected every industry. Everything they did to try to fix it, only made it worse. A truly remarkable chain of bad luck as far as I can see. It didn't help much that lots of people working from home during Corona, figured out this is the time to build an aircraft.

I'm not too worried about Van's. Someone will surely inject money into the company, and things will get back to some sort of normal. After all, they are the world's largest manufacturer of SEP's, and all their products are highly popular.

What is more disturbing is the state of the builder community. Lots of builders are blinded by the LCP event, and create all kinds of phantasies of how this happened to them. I mean, the LCP thing is bad, but for each builder it will at max set them back a couple of thousands of US$, and that is if they have to re-purchase new parts, which they most probably won't have to. They also behave like they have no saying in the solution of their aircraft. I mean, who is producing this aircraft? It's not Van's, it's the builder! Sometimes the words "either you are part of the solution, or you are part of the problem" is more true than this worn out phrase usually is. 

At least on VAF things seem to be going in the right direction now. Positive problem solving rather than negativity. Things will be OK IMO. On other sites, not so much. They are mostly used for the negativity that admins finally have managed to stop at VAF.

As for myself, I'm building my third shop now. The Onex is more or less finished. Soon it will be back to the -4 :-) 

Friday, June 28, 2013

A fundamental change of things

The RV-4 will be put on hold for some time. I have just ordered a Onex kit. The reasons for this are:
  • The RV-4 takes too long, I want to have a flying aircraft. To get a flying aircraft from where I stand today is faster and cheaper with a Onex kit. Work and other things in life takes too much time for me to be able to finish the RV-4 in a reasonable time frame right now, and I'm not getting any younger. The Onex is about an order of magnitude faster too build than the RV-4.
  • I have no hangar space.
  • I want to use Mogas.
  • When the Onex is finished, I can continue to build the RV-4, hopefully with a ULPower engine that runs on mogas.
  • And of course, I just love the Onex, a single seater aerobatic airplane with a VW engine. Nothing can beat the charm of that.
So, the Onex is simply a faster, cheaper and much more certain route to a flying airplane. An inevitable effect of this is that instead of building one aircraft, I am building two. Is that a wise thing? probably not, but then again, the process of building just a single airplane in your home/garage is not what you would define as a wise thing to do. Twice as much fun.

I have made a separate blog for the Onex here.  

Wednesday, June 12, 2013

And there was light

The new shop is finished. Took a new panorama shot with the lights.

Sunday, June 9, 2013

Shop starting to look like a shop

Only lights remains. Took a panorama shot.

Sunday, May 26, 2013

3.72 m of IKEA and PocketFMS

Finished both tables today. They fit with the windows so I can have some daylight (or darkness during winter time :-)

PocketFMS works like a charm. The batteries lasts several hours (at least 5-6 when running PocketFMS) and the Nexus7 has a very bright screen and is readable in sunlight. I am very satisfied with this setup; Nexus 7 and PocketFMS. I also bought this from DealExtreme, a 9600 ma external battery to charge phones and pads and any other gadget, enough for two full charges of the Nexus 7. With that setup I will have more than enough battery power.
 

IKEA work table

Along one wall of the new shop I will have a table. A purchased 2 kitchen table tops from IKEA. They can be made in several materials and colors. Mine are made of wood composite, covered with a film of a plastic of some sort in white with gray/black dots. The dimensions are 610*1860*35 mm. Probably not necessary, but I have seen wood composite sag over time if they are loaded, so I made a frame underneath. The frame was made of 38*68 mm laminated spruce bought at the local "Byggmax". Because it is laminated, I think it will not bend and warp like unlaminated wood often do. For the legs I used adjustable steel legs, also from Byggmax. The whole thing was cheap and very quick to set up, and very durable. Underneath the tables I will have some shelves or closets, but I haven't gotten to that just yet. (I originally planned some shelves and closets with the top mounted directly on top, but with the current config, I am free to move things around).

It will also work as a stand alone table, but the legs will need to have some diagonal braces in that case. I have two other tables for that.



 

Wednesday, May 22, 2013

Finished with floor and walls in new shop

Last bits of wall and floor in the new shop is finished, at last.