Hi Folks,

This is a follow on from 'Bill Finches old landyachts' thread and is the story of Vindicator's build.

After the sanderling experiments, I decided that I needed to build a better platform to have a crack at going faster with a wing. I felt that the yacht had to be more aerodynamic but also enclose me a lot more than the sanderling. The fuselage needed more room inside as well so all the wings sheeting system could be enclosed.

I designed the fuselage around elliptical shapes so that it was symmetrical both from above as well as from the side and with a double curvature to make it really rigid and force the axle and front plank to flex only where I wanted them to.
the other advantage was also that I only had to make one mould to make the fuselage halves.

This was one hell of an undertaking and I'm glad I didn't know what I was in for when I started! First I had to build a bench big enough - and flat - to make it on. Then, using some computer generated ellipses (more of a big deal to get in 1990 than now!) I made some profiles and mounted them on about 300mm stations (I think it was.)

From there I filled in the spaces between with whatever foam I could scrounge. At the time, I was working for Telstra and installing quite a lot of one type of equipment in telephone exchanges, which came in boxes with a lot of foam packaging which got recycled! Once the space was full, I used a hot wire to cut the foam to the shape of the stations.