My First Wing Rib

"A journey of a thousand miles begins with a single step." - Confucius
The first step in building an Aeromax is assembling the ribs, made up of about 40 little wooden bits held together with T-88 epoxy. They're complicated buggars, but lightweight marvels of engineering; sort of like a truss bridge.

On Thanksgiving day my brother Lee came over & helped me make my first rib. (he also stood lookout while I stole a couple turkey legs from my neighbor's outdoor fryer, but that's another story). We used to build model airplanes when were were kids. The AeroMax reminds me of a big model airplane.

The "2nd generation" quick-build kits from JDT are laser cut and laser-etched with the part number and orientation in the assembly. Pretty slick. But what's really slick is their rib assembly fixture; a large acrylic panel with pockets and notes for all for all the parts, and built-in screw clamps to locate & squeeze the parts while the epoxy is curing. Very ingenious! A fixture can be borrowed from JDT. You give them a deposit, which will be refunded (minus any repair costs) when you return it.