First things first, it feels good to get back out in the garage hangar for a nice long session on the plane. I’ve been itching to get back at the tailcone and start putting the stringers and skins in place. It feels a little odd to look around my shop and not see airplane parts stored everywhere because they are almost now just about all assembled or ready to be put together. Pretty crazy, but mostly just exciting. So exciting that apparently I stopped paying attention to what I was doing. Exhibit A below:
The little guy in the background there is a pretty effective propane heater. It is so effective that when some idiot isn’t paying attention to what he’s doing and drapes his compressor line over the top of it while drilling stringer holes it makes a huge ***WHOOOOSHHHHH*** sounds and as highly compressed air races out it lands on the furnace plates shooting fireballs all over the garage floor. So there’s that. Once my heart rate fell back below 400 I was able to have a good chuckle and head out to pick another one up real quick at the hardware store. It did also make me think about starting to record some of my shenanigans using a GoPro and post those too… We’ll see. As much fun as it sounds to laugh at myself for stuff like this, it also sounds like a lot more work too. Work that I could be putting into the plane. I’ll keep you posted.
Laughing at myself was only part of the fun today. The real enjoyment came out of seeing the tailcone finally take shape! Now that I have (somewhat) moved past my angst towards the stringers, I can see their utility immediately. It looks pretty awesome. But first I had to construct a better “sawhorse” to keep the tailcone high enough off the ground. Rather than get fancy I just bolted some 2×4’s to my existing garden bench top on the side of my shop.
It’s a bit difficult to see here, but you can look end-on at the 2×4’s and see them sticking straight out from the bench top. This gives me enough clearance to start with the rest of the work. A pretty simple, but also pretty elegant solution to the problem. Navigating around them is a bit of a trick since this section of the plane is so large, but I’ll get over it. Or not and just keep complaining about it in future blogs as I’m known to do… Such is life.
This is a shot of what I did for about 4 hours today. Insert stringers, locate using the pen marks made earlier while fabricating the stringers, match drill the holes, cleco in place, then move down the line, then repeat on the next stringer. Then add the next skin and do it for three more long stringers as well. Honestly not as tedious as it sounds because there is certainly a bit of thought that goes into keeping straight lines on the stringers and keeping everything as clean as can be.
Finally one with the side skin on. It’s actually starting to look like an airplane fuselage now! That alone got me pretty excited and pushed me through the last bit of the work session today. I love how this is all coming together. More to come!
Total time today = 4 hours
Total time empennage = 138 hours
Total time aircraft = 138 hours