At long last, I was able to finish my first full part of the plane today. I’d be more excited I think if I didn’t make a mistake. More on that in a bit, but I’ll start with some other points first. I continued to feel pretty confident in my… Read More »Vertical stabilizer – DONE
Confession: the title was misleading. I am going to start with my family trip today that we all took down to Rough River State Park in Kentucky. It was about a 90 minute flight from KUMP, which was perfect. The whole place was really neat with the runway right inside… Read More »Riveting vertical stabilizer (and family trip!)
The first order of business on the night was to drill out my faulty rivet from yesterday. The drilling ended up going quite well, which is what I was most worried about. I didn’t want to over-drill the hole and make it too wide to accept a new rivet. That… Read More »Vertical Stabilizer Assembly
I have to start by glowing once more about how well the priming turned out. Working with all these primed parts has been so easy and I am glad that I waited to dimple until after the priming. I can now see how everyone says it is more difficult to… Read More »Dimples and first rivets
Only a few more hours of work to get the rudder finished up as far as I can before priming. I am still holding to my decision to not dimple until after the parts are primed so we will continue to see how that holds up after the first prime… Read More »Rudder – Part 4
More match drilling of the skins today. I also just had a strong sense of deja vu here… As if I’ll be using the phrase “more match drilling….” more than a handful of times in the coming months. I’m sure I’m just imagining things. Another item on the docket today… Read More »Rudder – Part 3
I like the plan of moving on to the rudder so far – I think it has been a good call. In fact, it has been an excellent move because the replacement primer was supposed to arrive yesterday and UPS sent me a notice today saying that it was damaged… Read More »Rudder Part 2
I’m still awaiting the arrival of my next batch of primer since the first one didn’t go so well during shipping. Rather than sit around waiting to prime parts, I figured I would get around to creating even more parts to prime! On to the rudder it is. The first… Read More »Rudder Part 1 – and Pancake Breakfast
Well, let’s start with the disappointing news first. I’m pretty sure the primer (Akzo 463) should be INSIDE the can upon delivery… Yup – confirmed. It should be. I’m not missing any new concepts there. One additional note – this stuff is toxic. It literally smells like cancer. I cannot… Read More »Vertical Stabilizer – Part 3
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… Read More »Vertical Stabilizer – Part 2