Winter build project: Wolfgang Matt’s ATLAS

Blimey! Is someone actually going to start building one of these badboy's :woohoo:

Blimey Pete, give us a chance, my wood order went in last night, if Mike ever tells you it'll only cost £50 then add at least half again :woohoo:

Anyway, I had hoped the wood would arrive before the weekend, it looking a tad wet and windy, but alas it'll won't be shipped until Monday.

In the mean time I've been deciding how best to test the wood so that I can be confident that it meets my demanding requirements. For example we all know resonance can be very dangerous as it can shake a plane apart, so I've decided to measure the natural resonance of all the wood and ensure that I don't put harmonically similar wood next to each other, for example this piece of wood resonates to the note A when wacked:



The other thing I need to consider is the impact resistance of the wood, the size of hammer and velocity which it was swung were all scientifically calculated to simulate one of my landings. :whistle:



Please note the above image is for Simon, who berated me at the weekend for a lack of balsa bashing :evil:

Please also note, no balsa was harmed the creation of these photos.

That's dedicated work Chris. Are you going to fit a truss rod to adjust the wing incidence?

Chris....all this about notes and harmonic resonance? Does that mean that (God forbid it ever went in) would the sound be less or more pleasant?

Mr Bright, how could you even contemplate such a thing, I'm shocked

However I suspect it might sound a bit like this... imagine an electric guitar with a lot of distortion, now scrape the edge of the pick down the bass e string towards the nut before strumming a big fat E minor chord, and if you happen to be playing Alan's Strat, give the whammy bar a good slow wobble at the end. :pinch:

Alan, I'm contemplate the biflex tussrod and micro tilt adjustment


On a serious note, when joining the extra lenght onto the fuselage side, I'm assuming the join is reinforced with the ply doubler, but is it also wise to do a scarf joint?

It won't hurt to do a scarf joint, but the Blue Angel plan just has a butt joint and the ply holds it together. I'll do the same on the Atlas.