Awesome offer. In 6 years of marriage, I've been able to get away for 4 weekends without the family. This project is going to be 1-2 hrs per night spread out over a long time. I'd love to take you up on the offer, but my wife would never go for it.
I've made version 5 in sketchup now that I have a better understanding of my construction methods. I think I'm going to use as cheap as possible plywood for my stations (ribs), coroplast for the skin, and some sort of tape for the seams. I really want a "proof of concept" before I dive in and make it with wood using the pygmy boat stitch method. I think wood is a great method, and even if I painted it black, it would look awesome.
With a cheap facsimile of the model I can tuft test and modify the shape if needed. I'd hate to build a perfect wooden aerocap and realize that I made a fundamental aerodynamic design error.
With this sketchup model I used far fewer points on each curve. I used more accurate measurements of the rear of the cab and top rails of the box so I can use the station dimensions to create the shape I want with fewer measurements. In sketchup I can also lay out all the stations on a 4x8 "virtual" sheet of plywood so I waste as little material as possible.
