OK this is the very first job I go. I was given some long metal tubes and told to make hydraulic and fuel lines out of them. Luckily, they had some smaples I could copy, and, of course, showed me and Randy exactly how to do the job by helping us. As would quickly become a pattern, they would show me how to make a part, and I would then shoo them off and get to work, repeating exactly what they showed me, and then show them the parts afterwards to confirm that they were up to spec.

See? Fuel-pressurization line up top, and fuel overflow line beneath that. This is the wingtip, and the inside of the gas tank (the wing is a wet-wing) is visible at right, in it's white tank-sealer.

See? The lines I bent (with a simple bending-tool) and installed are now in the wing. The big line up top takes fuel from the tank and sends it to the engine, and the long line below that is the fuel overflow return to the tank from the engine. The middle-length line is hydraulic, for the brakes, and the shorter lines are hydraulic gear-up and gear-down.

To make one of these tubes, you simply start with the straight tubing shown above, put on the blue fittings that you see right above and below, and then use a bender to bend the tubes at precise angles and locations until they are just like the samples that they gave us to copy that you see lying around in the image below with the green tags on them.

Diesel helps by chewing on a piece of wood he found on the floor:


I do final fitting of the fuel and hydraulic lines. We get them bent just perfect to fit right in place! Note that the wing has almost zero... waste.

It is just the simplest carbon-fiber shell, all wet with fuel inside (There are no fuel 'tanks'... instead, the wing just fills with fuel. No waste.) The fuel lines are incredibly short. The fittings all very minimal. The parts have all been boiled down to their barest essence: We have exactly what we need, no more, with ecomomy of parts such that the design remains clean and simple, with no extra 'fluff' or inneficiency.