John:

I am over-thinking this. I have the wood for the hull and wings and
am making the mast and steering hardware. I had a very complex
fuselage design, and it would have been heavy and strong as a tank.
Your pix shoved that away, and now I am thinking very simple.

I am half-way through a load analysis. I am presuming several cases
to determind the design loads for sizing the fuselage, mast spar, and
shrouds. The design case seems to be one with the mast is laid over
(side shroud loose) for heavy air.

I have some different views on design than you do, and am going in a
direction that may make a light and durable rig. I am going to build
the main wing more like an airplane wing, and use epoxy throughout.
First will build a spar box with rectangular wood pieces just under
the skin, tied together with plywood sheer caps fore and aft. This
will be centered about 1/3 chord back from the leading edge. Planning
on nose and tail ribs glued to the sheer webs and a thin tail spar
like yours. The nose ribs will be tied together with a leading-edge
stringer just behind the front skin. The front skin will either be
thin ply or edge-glued strips, not a solid block. The trailing ribs
will either be 3mm ply or trusses of thin wood, like traditional
airplane ribs.

The flap construction will also be much simpler, as it doesn't support
much span-wise load. Gougeon Brothers West magazines published a
wing-mast article some years ago that showed that gluing the skin to
the front spar in a V-angle, then just bending the skins together at
the trailing edge (tapered and over a strip of fiberglass for
durability) made a foil shape very close to the NACA 4-digit section.
Shaping the nose spar to the NACA section completes the construction.
Makes sense, as the NACA section is a mathematical spline curve, and
the plywood is a material spline.

I am going to experiment with flap twist control to unload the top of
the wing at speed. The control is simple and a one-string or one-lever
control will either twist or untwist the flap.

I am leaning toward a fully tapered wing/flap. That works out to just
a bit over a two-foot wing and two-foot flap at the base, and a
one-foot wing and one-foot flap at the tip. This is a bit more work,
but lowers the vertical center of effort some.

I will have to make a separate plank for wheels. Your rules force me
in that direction as I intend to use DN runners on the sides and must
use chocks, rather than pillow block bearings on the wheel axles, as
you must be doing.

I have the wing profile Tom Speer designed for LYDIA, and that is my
wing section plan, with a 0012 flap (approximately). I wish I dared
to go to foam ribs, as that would make life go very fast. I'd
appreciate Tom's thoughts on that foil now some 17 years later.

One last thought: Flying on a 757 last week, I noticed the aft-most
fowler flaps had vortex generators tucked in the slot. Has anyone
ever tufted the flaps to see if they are causing separation at high
angles?

Well, hopefully I will get this thing on the ice in January. That is
my target date.

Ken