Broke down and obtained Project 2010 through MSDN. Much more solid than OpenProj although I see where OpenProj got their inspiration.
So I am all set up now and can see what I need to do and when I need to order what. No progress this week as I have had sick child (my son) today and I had an allergy attack yesterday.
Started the framing for the port interior wall yesterday.
Switching from GanttProject to OpenProj due to some bugs I can’t work around.
The original base frame was made of 2×4’s sandwiched between 3/4″ plywood. I hired a structural engineer to estimate the uniform load capacity for the 7′ length of a sistered 2×4 beam and it was only rated for about 500lbs. Since then I have gone back to the drawing board and determined the relative strengths based on Moment of Inertia:
2×4: 5.36
4×4: 12.505
2×6: 20.8 (almost 4x as strong as 2×4)
2×8: 52.73 (almost 10x as strong as 2×4)
2×10: ~115 (more than 20x as strong as 2×4)
After seeing Aliens for the hundredth time this morning (thanks in part to my son) it dawned on me that they don’t have a conventional power quadrant (thrust levers).
I drew on my professional experience flying jet aircraft – manual manipulation of the engine output is dwindling. There are basically 5 modes (detents) on a modern day thrust lever (FADEC):
Is it possible to map this control to the flight stick? Because of the VTOL nature of the Dropship don’t we need some kind of fine control? Like in hover – to climb or descend?
I can envision a “auto-hover” which will reduce the pilot workload but what about landing on a grid reference? Using pitch trim in VTOL mode? Not sure what else it would do.
Got it 50% mounted this evening. One of the bolts has no access and the other was off by an eighth of an inch!
The project is getting a little complicated – I am always waiting on a bolt or nut and I stare sometimes for what feels like half an hour before I figure out what I can actually do in a given session. I remember my project managers used Microsoft Project (MSPROJ) years ago and the Gantt chart it produced seemed like it would do the trick. I found a free version online that can import/export MSPROJ files called GanttProject. Here is an example of the current items and their dependencies.
While we are on the subject I started looking around for acrylic sheets. My first inclination was to get a large sheet from Home Depot and then cut it. Somehow I landed on Professional Plastics where they will cut to size and deliver for the same price or less. I am currently working up an order for the 1/8″ thick inner window panes for the six (6) monitors.
After cleaning all the saw dust up I felt confident to do some metal works (grinding). My son thought I looked pretty funny!
