REFLECTOR: Fiberglass stiffness

[Al Gietzen]

Brian;

I've always ordered the "Rutan Bidirectional" from AS; part # RA7725 for the
coarse BID.  I'm quite certain that is what came with the kit.

I don't recall the need for an aluminum hardpoint, quite sure I just used
sheet metal screws into the wood shim glassed on with the BID plys.  With
the hard point well it would seem the plys may be redundant, but add a
safety factor.  You'll have to be the judge.  The loads are modest.

Al

-----Original Message-----
From: reflector-bounces at tvbf.org [mailto:reflector-bounces at tvbf.org] On
Behalf Of Brian Michalk
Sent: Monday, August 18, 2008 7:25 AM
To: Velocity Aircraft Owners and Builders list
Subject: REFLECTOR: Fiberglass stiffness

Yesterday we attempted to do some work with the canard trim hardpoints
where the actuator mounts.

The fiberglass we bought from somewhere was coarse BID, but we could not
convince it to lay down over the corners.  I compared it to some fine
bid, and it's much stiffer than the fine BID.  The BID that came with
the kit was nice and floppy, so it would have made the corners just fine.

How would I know what to order?  As far as I know, one orders by the
weave (fine, coarse, etc.), and the cloth weight.  I haven't seen
anything for the stiffness of the cloth which would directly affect
workability.

We gave up, and left the wood shim and AL hardpoint to cure as is.  We
used flox for our adhesive.  Do we really need to cover a wood shim with
2x bid as called for in the manual? 

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