Not surprisingly, it took a great deal of discipline to go upstairs and unpack my things prior to going out into the garage to work on the plane. But I did and I suppose I’m glad I did. Not the point. On to the plane!
It was pretty successful I think, and not just for accomplishing a bunch on the vertical stabilizer but I also learned a lot of lessons regarding the build process too. It was fun to have Anne out there taking some pictures of me working too – this really is a pretty special project and I’m lucky to have my family with me 100% on this. Anyone that tells you that they built their airplane completely and entirely alone is not likely telling the truth. Just one week in and I have spent more hours on Van’s Airforce Forums than I have on my plane and my family has helped me unpack and categorize all of the parts. I simply do not see how a project of this scope is done without the help of others.
Anne took a picture of me clecoing the skin to the stabilizer.
The skin clecoed in place… well kind of.
[Big pause here. I just want to discuss the fact that I’m not sure how to make the word cleco (which I believe to be a trade name anyways) past tense, plural, a gerund, or any other kind of grammatically correct form of the word. If you know, please comment. Also – do not be offended if I do nothing with the information you provide. Just a heads up.]
Back to work. Notice the lack of clecos in the center rib line. I was unable to get the holes to line up and couldn’t wiggle them into place going one hole at a time, so I had to disassemble the entire structure, realign the ribs and cleco it all back in place. Remember the lessons learned from above? Well, it turns out I needed to do this anyways. I did not round over the ends of the nose ribs well enough and got some small bumps in the skin showing through at the point where they wrapped around snugly on the ends. I saw this happen repeatedly on other builder logs and attempted to round my ribs over well enough to avoid this issue, but it would seem that it is just destined to happen to all first time builders. A good lesson to learn and I’m glad I took it apart and did it right.
End view – really coming together. I think it is views like this that will keep me motivated in the long run. Anytime it starts to “look like an airplane” are times that I think it will really drive me forward. My daughters were particularly proud of this accomplishment. I am nervous however, because they thought I was getting close to being done because it looks like I had already built a whole wing! I wish girls… I wish… But then again not really – I’m just getting started and really enjoying the process. I’m sure I’ll look back at this moment both with nostalgia and frustration at various points, but they are all in the future so I’m not worried today.
Pretty close to getting it all done, and done right. Then cleaning up for the day.
Total time today = 3 hours
Total time empennage = 11 hours
Total time aircraft = 11 hours