I know I’ve been excited about this all along, but today it snapped into pretty clear focus. I’m building an airplane. Seriously. One of my favorite images so far is this one below looking aft down the tailcone. You can see the stringers that I made and match drilled, the ribs running the entire length, and a seemingly endless number of clecos.
This also captures just how far I have come today. Each stringer on the side has to be located using the pen lines made while fabricating them, clamped in place, drilled on center one at a time, clecoed in place, then complete the entire stringer. Do this for each of the six stringers total and that’s a real time investment. I had some brief difficulties when I put the left side skin on getting the holes to line up on some of the ribs, but with some maneuvering and placing of clecos I got it all to fit perfectly.
Once I got the stringers placed, I had to create a few new parts and get them match drilled in place in tight quarters. This wasn’t all that challenging but took a few extra minutes of mental gymnastics to get exactly right.
This is a top view of the rudder stop bracket. Again, it’s not too much work, just need to slow down and make sure that all of the dimensions are correct and holes drilled where they need to be.
Overall, for as much time as I spent today, not an enormous amount of detail to discuss. Once again, I’m really enjoying how this is coming together. It’s pretty exciting to work on something other than a control surface!
Total time today = 4 hours
Total time empennage = 142 hours
Total time aircraft = 142 hours