Today was a good motivating day for me. I have finally put the never-ending elevators up in storage (I’ll have to get a picture of how I’m storing things put up here as well – perhaps that can help someone else along the way trying to make this happen in a small garage “hangar”). Up to this point, I have pretty much been working on control surfaces or leading edges of them. Lots of ribbing followed by placing the skins on. Throw a little tank sealant in for good measure of course. But now I get to work on the tailcone of the aircraft. So far, it appears as if I’ll be making a series of hoops, running stringers between them, then adding the skins. Certainly not meant to be an understatement here, but I do like to read ahead and get a sense of what I’m doing on a larger scale as well. Off we go on the tailcone journey!
Right here is one of the first pieces you are asked to construct. There are some reinforcement plates and some holes to match drill, but pretty straightforward so far.
Moving forward on the aircraft the structural hoops get a bit larger and now start coming in two halves that you have to join together.
I like this photo because it gives a good perspective shot aft to forward of the parts that I assembled today. I would say two big impressions I took away from the day are first and foremost, that was a ton of deburring. Wow. Almost went through an entire 1″ scotch brite wheel (note: time to make another Aircraft Spruce order). The other major impression is just how flimsy it feels currently, but I am reminded of how I felt this way when making ribs for the vertical and horizontal stabilizers. Now, when I move those parts around to storage, they feel rock solid. It really is an impressive piece of engineering that individual pieces can feel brittle and almost like toys but when everything is brought together it functions as it should and becomes an incredible piece of aviation machinery.
Going to stop here for the day and make some stringers tomorrow.
Total time today = 2 hours
Total time empennage = 130 hours
Total time aircraft = 130 hours