I love meeting new people and tell them I am building a plane. Every once in awhile I get a surprise. I was at my niece's wedding in Seattle WA and I found out an old friend was a composite engineer at Boeing. I had no idea. We talked about materials for a couple of hours. I am going to hound him about getting some of their scraps. I don't know if it will ever happen, but a guy can dream. He had a lot of interesting information. Right now he is working on the manufacturing process because the manual layup increases the expenses to the point where the savings in weight are all lost. He says that the composite they use is Carbon that has to be held in sub zero temps until the time they actually lay it up and then they have 5 days to lay it up and cure it at 350 degrees. He says they pay about $100 a pound for the stuff and waste enough every day to build a small plane. You see why I want to get my hands on some? Anyway I am going to hit him up for more information I just thought I would share some of the stuff I picked up. He works at Boeing but doesn't really know about flying characteristics beyond knowing he has to design for bird strikes and the structural aspects are a completely different department.
-Kurt 141 Hours in AZ
