Sometimes one gets the opportunity of a lifetime to work on some really unique projects. In this case, the aircraft was the Nixus and the project was helping to build an outboard wing panel and patch up some fixes to the other wing panels (pictured left). Each patch was laid up in an MDF mold. Once complete, each piece was de-molded and bonded to reach respective wing. To transfer the loads from the rest of the wing through the patch, carbon tape was applied overlapping the seam between the wing and patch (you can see the patch seam here as a thick black line running chord-wise and then turning span-wise). 

Thankfully, Paulo, the incredibly brilliant engineer and builder of the aircraft cared greatly about the surface quality of the wings, and I never had to sand anything (there was a whole lot of wing that needed finishing)!

Sometimes you get the opportunity of a lifetime to work on some really unique proje- wait, that sounds familiar! 

I was one of two interns on the Perlan Project's 2019 campaign in Argentine Patagonia, and while I spent most of my time managing Cubesats, launching weather balloons, and drinking mate, I did get to touch some nice hardware in the Perlan II. If you've read my About page, you already got to see the difficult-to-reach electrical bulkhead feedthrough in the heart of the glider. I also assisted with ground handling, rebreather servicing, and other miscelanous tasks, like taking out slack on a very hard to reach left rudder pedal turnbuckle (pictured left). What a fun time! 

While Jewish summer camp is quite fun, glider building sleep-away camp might be even fun-er. I got to join Akaflieg SLO for a build session at HP Aircraft in Arnold, CA in the Spring of 2018. We prepped and laid up 2 fuselage halves along with some misc. parts for an HP-24 kit sailplane. What a fun experience!