13 Ambury Ave,
Royal Oak,
Auckland 1023
New Zealand
s.chilcott@slingshot.co.nz
January 2010
Steve has made a lot of progress with an almost complete fuselage now sitting
in his hanger alongside his D18.
Picture
June 2008
I have now started work on the Menestrel again and have just about finished a
set of wing ribs. I am thoroughly enjoying getting into the project again and so
far have finished most of the control system metal work, the elevator, rudder
and majority of the ribs. I do not have the luxury of my large workshop anymore
so am making a kit of parts in the shed and will work out how to put it all
together when I get to that point.
June 2005
Steve Chilcott is building a Menestrel in New Zealand and has just made
contact. He sais:
"I can appreciate the
materials problem as when we started on the D18 I could not get any of the
timber here at all. Then we came across a company importing Western Hemlock,
which is pretty similar to Douglas Fir , for ladders and the stuff was perfect,
6m lengths all quarter sawn and perfect grain so we were away.
Plywood was similar with birch
ply being expensive and rare but we found out they had had a similar problem in
Aussie and had tested Hoop pine ply and found the marine bonded stuff to be
acceptable for building aircraft with similar strength to the birch ply.
I noticed you are starting on the fuselage first. I found starting on the small
bits first to be a distinct advantage. So far I have managed to build the rudder
frame and most of the tailplane ribs out of scrap I had left over from the D18.
I found on the D18 that I made a few mistakes early on and trashing a rudder
spar was far easier to do than a larger component.
Pictures
