Hatz Biplane Association

Epoxy coated the upper right wing of #86 today. Sand and spray one more time and this wing is ready for covering. Three more wings to build.

-Scott

Great job Scott, your wing looks beautiful.
I'm getting ready to start wing assembly very soon and my spars are about ready to ship from the spruce supplier. I'm having issues though with the plans in calculating the correct taper and so is the supplier who was going to cut them for me. Since you have just finished your first wing, the timing is perfect to ask you how you culculated your spar taper and are there any changes that I should consider when cutting the spars. I've heard that if the spars are tapered as per the plans, they will be off.
Yours looks great and I really look forward to watching your progress.
Ron

I deviated from the plans with respect to the tip shape and hence spar tapers. I spent many hours looking, measuring, and re-measuring until I found a combination that was pleasing to the eye yet kept the aileron spar upper surface flat (no taper) so hinging can be extended to the tip. I have no specific measurements but below is a link to 260 images of Hatz Classic #86 on my Sonerai.net website. Perhaps a few will give you some idea of my solution and inspire your own. See http://www.sonerai.net/hatz/. More pictures to follow.

-Scott

Will that be the wing you use for inverted flight? (hee, hee, hee)

Jeff Moore

JBMoore wrote:Will that be the wing you use for inverted flight? (hee, hee, hee)

Yes. But the picture was taken shortly after spraying the bottom surfaces.

RSouthard wrote:Great job Scott, your wing looks beautiful.
I'm getting ready to start wing assembly very soon and my spars are about ready to ship from the spruce supplier. I'm having issues though with the plans in calculating the correct taper and so is the supplier who was going to cut them for me. Since you have just finished your first wing, the timing is perfect to ask you how you culculated your spar taper and are there any changes that I should consider when cutting the spars. I've heard that if the spars are tapered as per the plans, they will be off.
Yours looks great and I really look forward to watching your progress.
Ron

I should have mentioned this but I would not let the supplier cut the tapers. I think this is best done by the builder. I found the plans to be pretty accurate except for the spar tapers. The old forum discussed the errors. There's room for a little creativity with the tip bow shape and some builders have more "swoosh" (for lack of a more descriptive word) than mine. The shape you come up with will determine the spar taper. In may case, I made the tip bows first then cut the spar tapers to align with it.

-Scott

Makes perfect since now Scott, thank you very much. Your pictures are very helpful and I will definitely use them as a reference and really appreciate your help. I was able to reach the supplier in time this morning and they will now be sending the blanks with no tapers. Jeff, from Evergreen Aviation Services has been a great help with the spars and will be shipping them out to me next week.

Changed the URL of my build photos to http://www.sonerai.net/hatz.

-Scott

Great pics Scott, thanks for sharing. Its great to see someone else building in thier garage. Your quite a ways along and its very encouraging...I am jealous. I thought I had out grown my garage, but I can see that if you've gotten this far along, then I can keep struggling along. thanks again, and congratulations on such a great job.

Thanks Dave. The garage is starting to close in on me as the project gets further along. I ran into a conundrum today with where to store the finished wing. I was planning to keep it in the dinning room but for reasons I do not understand, my wife said no. It's now hanging with proper support against the garage wall.

Three wing tip bows begin this week.

-Scott