29 September 2002

Well, last week was only the start of some frustrating events. This week got worse. I remade the right 'eyebrow' panel; I had to move the rear corner of the bubble down from its original location. As it was to high, it was not possible to get the eyebrow panel flush. This meant new holes in the rear strip to which the bubble is mounted, and it will have to be replaced now.
My advice: do not mount the two rear sides of the bubble until you first have fitted the eyebrow panels... Just mount the middle clips.
I also mounted the left eyebrow panel. Next problem: I mounted the left internal panels, required to mount the doorframe on, and the left front-bottom panel. Oops. The bubble was 50mm to wide on each site, and could not be forced into position. Why? Because the front of the bubble was mounted to far backwards. This causes the sides of the bubble to move outwards. I had to move the front of the bubble 30mm forwards from where I had mounted it previously. Another 3 holes to fill...
My advice: Do not mount the front of the bubble permanently, until you know where the sides are supposed to end up!!

And oh, ofcourse! This changed the shape of the bubble! So now my left eyebrow panel no longer fits, and has to be made again

Next cockup I made: When I cut off the doorframe at the bottom, I cut if of so it would connect flush with the little corner piece below it, as that means the outside skin will be flush against both the doorframe and the corner piece. Bad mistake. Due to the force with which the bubble sides still want to bend outwards, the connection point could not stand the stress, and would bend outward with a sharp corner. As I use the supplied doorframe, and I don’t have the equipment to make another one, I had to make a special construction to strengten the connection. This made it very ugly, so then I had to rethink the internal cover panel (which is not on the plans in the first place) to cover also the inside on the connection between the doorframe and corner piece… See pics. That was my week, more fun next week!

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Photo album generated by album from MarginalHacks on Sun Sep 29 19:58:53 2002