Better Living Through CNC

Greetings from Reno!  I’m happy to report that I’ve finally got to see some of my L-39 handiwork in action.  There is an Australian based L-39, Race 66, which is sporting the first set of L-39 wingtips I manufactured.  They are looking quite nice, if I do say so myself, and I even got to see them flying today, which was a real thrill.  For those that aren’t familiar with the Reno Air Races, imagine a bunch of planes all flying in a circle very close to the ground, close to each other, and going as fast as they possibly can.  So far we’re just at the part where people do practice laps and dial in their aircraft, so the Jet Class racers are going a “mere” ~400-500 mph right now.  Here’s a pic of the tips in action:

That was very exciting to see them in flight!  Here are some pics on the ground of the installed tips – the customer chose to forgo the tip lights and instead just “fogged” the inside of the lenses:

Just before departing for Reno, I delivered the second set of wingtips to Minh Jet.  Everything is always easier the second time through, and the second set certainly benefited from that, but really I’m splitting hairs here.  I was asked by Minh to put this set in white primer for display here at Reno, which I was excited to do.  After three coats with lots of sanding in between, I eventually finished them off with some 2000 grit to get them as close to “painted” in primer as possible.  I like to keep my work very tidy, and I would say that these fit that description:

Especially with carbon, it’s hard to tell just how good the molded surface is until you get some primer on it.  I must say, I was really thrilled with the quality of the T-Splines surface, and how I was able to bring that quality out of the computer and into reality.