Steps have been welded up.  Finally get to place them and see how they look on the trailer. Pretty damn good i recon.

Steps

Bent the steps up last night.  I think they look fantastic!  Got a mobile welding guy coming today to do the welding since I don't know how to weld aluminium.

Rear Frame

The rear frame is mostly welded into place.  Just ran out of light for the last few welds so will do them in the morning.  It has no triangulation as yet, but is still a lot stronger than I though which is encoraging.  

I also ordered the sheet for the sides which was meant to arrive today but didnt, so I guess tomorrow.

Just another quick photo to show the complete floor.  Also in the trailer you can see the very lovely aluminium floor which will be bent into the steps.  Looking forward to doing that.

I previously mentioned the front curved piece of floor but didnt show it as it wasnt curved at the time.  It is now:

The front frame started to go on today.  This is the first time I've tried welding the 1m wall steel for quite a while.  My previous attempts have been less than impressive, but all the practice I've had recently means I now have no problem.  Which is a good thing since the entire frame is made of the stuff!

2nd floor piece cut and in place.  Next comes the front rounded piece

More floor

Finished the floor frame and cut the first piece of floor plate to shape.  I have done enough welding now that I'm doing a pretty good job!

Floor Plate

Just a quick one.  Purchased the floor plate.  It is 2.1mm steel and should do the job perfectly. Currently it flexes a bit when you walk on the areas it is bridging.  Once the frame is welded in underneath is will be lovely and solid.  I will start cutting out the wheel well holes and weld in the bottom frame today.  The floor itself wont be welded in till the front and rear frames are in position.

Internode

Well if the extremely fast Broadband wasn't enough of a reason to love Internode, here's another one - they are putting up a significant amount of sponsorship for the project.

I would like to think I am particularly special, but in fact Internode are rediculously generous when it comes to this sort of thing.  I (and many others) have already been a beneficary of this via Internode's sponsorship of the South Australian Juniors amongst other things.  So a huge thank you to them!

In other news, floor plate will be collected today.  Did the sums on the balance for the trailer and it turns out that leaving the axel right where it is will give a tow ball weight of around 50kg which is perfectly acceptable.  Total weight of the trailer will be aroung 450kg.  Way off the 750 limit where it needs breaks, which saves me about $350.

So good news all round really.  Stay tuned!

Building work commences

Started modifying the trailer today.  The design builds on the boat trailer with a main beam down the middle and the floor and fuselage structure build off that.  The kinked cross beams of the boat trailer have to be taken into account, but this isnt much trouble.  The small length of tube sitting on top is one of the pieces that will be welded in to create a flat frame for the floor plate to sit on.

My welding was rather a lot better this time round owing to the much thicker material.

Next comes the floor plate, but this cant go down till I know the position of the wheels.  I suspect they need to go further back as my design has a lot more weight at the back.  I am currently working out the weights on all the parts and using a bit of high school maths to work out the final C of G.  Not too difficult, but time consuming.  The trailer in its current state as seen in the pics is 113kg.  Not too bad.  I would like to keep the whole thing under 750kg so it doesn't need its own breaks.

Curved screen photos

While I had been touting the virtues of a curved screen, I had yet to actually see what it looked like.  So today I did a mock up using a nice white piece of MDF for the screen.  Some of the issues with a curved screen are the focus across the  width of the screen and the image shape which ends up taller in the middle than in the edges - somthing I have a software solution lined up for

The problems are far less significant than I thought.  Some correction will be needed but not much, and I didnt notice a focus problem.  The feeling of immersion sitting in fron of the screen is excellent!  The final screen will be wider as well, so I am excited to see how it turns out.

GFA Seminar

The Gliding Federation of Australia seminar was on this weekend.  I took the Sim along to display as well as giving a talk on progress so far and what I hope to achieve.  

It all seemed to go pretty well.  There was lots of interest, and lots of people had a go.  I would have liked more time for people to try it but I think most people saw it working at least.

If anyone at the seminar didn't manage to catch me, please feel free to email me any questions or comments.