Solar cell stringing by Irena.  Laminator on the right.            Cell placement for the tail surface.

Carbon fiber pre-preg cut for outboard wing spar caps

Nick Meligari, our summer volunteer prepares the spar oven for the bake.

Nick holds up the upper and lower spar caps to the wing template. Look carefully, and you can see the spar caps drawn on the template

An event on April 3 was held in the Solarni Horizont workshop to show off what has been built so far of the new two seater.

The cockpit is well along, and the tailboom was also positioned where it will be mounted, with the motor pod and prop mocked up.

Roman Susnik was there with a motor housing for the new custom made 20 kw motor he is designing for this new solar powered two seater.

You can see more of Roman’s electric motors for aircraft at http://www.glider-one.si/

More pictures are on the news tab of the solar flight home page

The campaign to build the Solar Stemme fuselage enters its third week, with good progress.  The tail boom is 90% finished.  The halves are ready to join, in the molds.

                                                                                                              Here is the inner side, with peel ply still on.

The cockpit is 55% finished, with the honeycomb having gone in today. 

 We started molding the canopy frame, using high modulus uni-carbon to increase the stiffness.

One seat is finished, and the other 30%.  Each part needs to be cured under vacuum three days, to build up the sandwich stucture in three different cure cycles. 

The team here at the Allstar glider factory continues to lend expert assistance to this build, especialy our host Andrej Papiorek, who really is an expert at composite glider design.

First days of fuselage fabrication at the Allstar Glider factory, in southern Poland.

The first layer of light carbon fabric being cut for the outer skin of the tail boom and fin.

Cured outer skin, with spar caps visible.

Nomex honeycomb bonded in for the sandwich core.

The Icare designer Proffessor Voit Nitschmann agreed to the long term loan of the Icare molds for Solar Flight’s new airplane.

You can learn more about Icare at http://www.ifb.uni-stuttgart.de/index.php/forschung/flugzeugentwurf/icare

Also invoved in the planning and logistics were Len Schumann, Karl Kasser, and Micro Schulz, all Stuttgart alumni.

These molds will allow very high qulality wings to be molded at the lightest possible weight.  The molds are being readied for the 10 meter inner wing section, to be built in our new shop in Radovljica, Slovenia.

Only small changes will be needed to the SUNSEEKER III design, to take advantage of this opportunity.

Micro Schulz test flying Icare in 1996

As you can see from the picture, Icare has a beautiful 25 meter wing.  The Stuttgarter’s hope to have Icare flying next summer, and to stage a distance contest between SUNSEEKER II and Icare, probably in Germany.  Sponsors for this event are being sought.

 Proffesor Nitschmann’s design firm www.sfl-gmbh.de is very freindly to our project, and we hope to work togeather in the future on solar powered aircraft.

Alan Weston, program manager at NASA, has invited us to apply for NASA support to aid the ongoing development of sport solar powered airplanes.

Tom Edwards, Eric Raymond, and Alan Weston

Facilities at Ames include the world’s biggest wind tunnel.

Intake for wind tunnel

Throat section of wind tunnel

The latest chapter in the SUNSEEKER saga was presented at the Experimental Soaring Association Western Workshop in Tehachapi, California.

The crowd was entertained by pictures and stories from the 2009 European Tour.

Just before Eric Raymond’s presentation Ray Morgan gave a speech about AV’s solar powered aircraft.

Beautiful Cherokee II

Eric and Ray

Richard Pfiffner was there, acquainting pilots with his amazing “ULTIMATE” GPS display.

This instrument is very useful, and is the centerpiece of the SUNSEEKER instrument panel. It has the brightest and highest resolution display available, and works well with the SeeYou flight planning and analysis tool.

http://www.craggyaero.com/  -  info@craggyaero.com

Solar Flight Team members Floyd Fronius, Klaus Savier, and “RC Dave” Freund

After finalizing our negotiations with Stemme, I traveled to the factory where the Stemme composite parts are made.

My train was met by the owner, Andrzej Papiorek, who took me straight to his factory. Allstar PZL Glider company makes their own design sailplanes, as well as the Stemmes.Andrzej is very enthusiastic about supporting my project to build a new solar powered airplane based on the Stemme S 10.

I was planning only to mold the fuselage parts there in Poland, but Andrzej offered the use of his assembly fixtures and canopy frame molds.

Andrzej weighing a stock S 10 canopy frame.

Mine will be made from high-modulus carbon to reduce the weight.

To learn more about this glider factory, go to http://www.szd.com.pl/

A descriptive page about the S 10 is at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stemme_S10

After owning a Stemme motor glider between 1999 and 2001, I settled on the S 10 fuselage for my two-seat configuration.

A series of meetings with Dr. Stemme has led to an agreement that will allow me to use the molds for this airplane.

The molds are in Poland at a subcontractor.

Some parts, such as the rudder pedals, can be used as-is.

I was invited at the last minute to an event celebrating 50 years of gliding at the Munster airport airport in the central Swiss Alps. About 60 of the best sailplanes were there, including two electric Antares. Also in attendance was our friend from Buttwil, Hans Uli, with his Stearman biplane.

We owe Hans a debt of gratitude for flying our camera man Floyd Fronius during the Sunseeker Alps crossing on April 14th.

Taking off in Munster, the first stop was my old hang gliding stomping grounds of Fiesch, now populated by hundreds of paraglider pilots.  I had to take care to avoid colliding with the many flyers (there’s five of them in this photo.)

After recharging my batteries while soaring there, I had to climb against the wind to Zermatt, where the Matterhorn was in the clear.

I carefully went around to the upwind side, where I found smooth slope lift.  Several people were on the steep summit.