Very impressive Rick.. Very. Congrats!
Karl
--- In This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it., "Rick" wrote:
>
> I finally got my load test out of the way. I had several people tell me they thought it was an unnecessary stressing of the wings, but a lot of these construction techniques were new to me as well as working with composites, and my wing was not constructed exactly like any other CDs that I was aware of. I wouldn't have felt at ease flying it without a test. My plan was to test it to 5 Gs but when calculating the necessary weight I forgot to subtract the weight of the wings so I loaded about 400 pounds more than I needed to. The test went well with really no noises other than occasional "bonks" as the leading edge oil-canned as the wings bowed down. At least until we got a crap-the pants "bang" toward the end. After several anxious minutes we found a screw had sheared off a diagonal brace on our test stand. Everything returned to normal after the load was removed and if I ever built another I wouldn't do the test. I uploaded a couple pictures to my photo section.