Shoulder harness, ballistic chute and fuselage fabric.

I made good progress this Easter holiday. I started the installation of the seat and shoulder harness system. Because of the reclined position of the pilot, I realized that I need to add two crotch straps because the pilot would submarine under the lap belt. I bought my shoulder harness and seat belt from Aircraft Spruce. I need to find a source of the following shoulder harness fitting.

Davis Manufacturing Shoulder Harness fitting

For some reason I cannot get in contact with anyone at Davis Aircraft who made the original harness. If I have to I will buy a second shoulder harness and cut them down to make the crotch straps, but I would prefer to find the fittings and make up my own. I have a local Master Rigger who could sew up the webbing. But based on the response I am receiving form Davis, I will use another manufactures harness.  Anyway, if anyone has any Ideas I would appreciate an email.

planebuilder@yahoo.com


I laid out the parachute risers. The need to route around the main spar and around the landing gear. These are the hardest points on the Plane. The riser straps lengths are designed such that after they deploy, they will come to a point 12 feet in the air above the CG. 

main spar riser web instal

 I installed the riser strap with a liberal amount of fabric adhesive. The fabric will bond over the straps and then an opening will be pierced and then wrapped into the opening, further retaining the riser straps. This is an area I will revisit when I finalize the Robin Plans. There has got to be a cleaner way to attach the riser straps





 

Riser strap routing

I attached the Straps to the fabric standoffs.  The are non structural and sit outside of the longerons. The straps route over the longerons right next to a truss gusset. This particular gusset was increased in thickness to match the strap thickness. this way strap routing will be partially hidden.Notice that the risers route aft of the roll over structure. Everything that has fabric would be history if I ever have to pull the deployment lever.

bottom covering

 the covering of the fuselage starts with the bottom panel. Each successive panel will lap over the previous panel. All lap joints will face downward and be reinforced with a 2 inch pinked tape.

Side panel being installed

side panel was added after the bottom. Extra reinforcements were added at the wing carry thru and the the landing gear. This fabric shrinks very well with an Iron set at 260 degrees. One trick I learned watching the Stewart Video is to immediately wipe off the excess Eko bond right after application. This way a thick bond line is eliminated and a much cleaner fabric job is done.

Left side front view

The lower tape was also added. The fabric is coming out really nice and clean, I definitely learned some lessons from covering the rest of the plane.