On Mar 25, 11:56*am, "noel.wade" wrote:
Having worked with Bob & Brad a bit on these projects, I have to say
that it seems weird at first to have homebuilders working on these
things...

But what you have to realize is that this is nothing new. *Burt
Rutan's composite designs have been built thousands of times by
amateurs all over the world. *Many well-known sailplane builders (from
Applebay to the big European manufacturers) started out as amateurs or
college students.

Composites have been around for decades and there's a lot of good
published information on how to work with them and what their
properties are. *As long as you meet certain quality minimums when you
work with composites, you end up with good parts. *Bob & Brad have
done remarkable work in figuring out how to apply cost-effective
construction methods (commonly associated with Rutan's "moldless"
systems) over to molded designs. *They've done vaccuum-bagging,
vaccuum-induced resin-infusion, and other supposedly fancy techniques;
and IMHO they've discovered that there's no magic to it - just
diligence and a LOT (a __LOT__) of elbow-grease! *About the only thing
they don't do is autoclave-cure parts; but I don't think that's
something the European glider manufacturers do either, right?

Also, its important to note that the HP-24 project is not an attempt
to push the state of the art. *There's no trimming of margins or
pushing for every last bit of performance. *The team is using known
airfoils, established practices, and tried-and-true construction
methods (often lovingly copied from very popular sailplane models, and
improved where practical).

I'm curious to see how the wings hold up under a sand-bag load test;
but seeing the project come together over the last 3 years (sometimes
being in the room), its exciting - though sometimes smelly and sticky
- stuff. *If I don't get rich in the next couple of years and buy a
top-line sailplane, I'll be thinking hard about an HP-24 kit! *The
idea of an LS-6-like sailplane at a lower cost than my DG-300 is
enticing...

--Noel

Thanks for the kind words Noel.............and for the help in the WA
shop on those occasions! My expectations of the HP-24 will be to give
all you 15m guys I fly with a real run for the money. The Apis does
pretty well, but I really look forward to the day when valley
crossings and ridge jumping to the east doesn't result in me chewing
the skin off my lower lip!

Brad
S/N #1