ATTACHED THE VERTICAL STABILIZER Let’s get it out of the way. It’s a terrible pun. I own that. But I also own an airplane that has BOTH the horizontal and vertical stabilizers attached to the tailcone! At the same time! I am pretty excited about this. I am having a… Read More »Tailcone is stabilized
STORING THE ELEVATORS Before I can begin attaching the horizontal stabilizer, I have to disassemble all of my hard work. As predicted. I removed all of the bolts and washers from the elevator horns and labeled them for location. I also removed both elevators and did the same with those… Read More »Putting some junk in the trunk
Today was quite the marathon day. The family went out to run a bunch of errands so I got to put in a full day out in the garage. It was excellent. I would have probably got a lot more done if I did not end up spending 45 minutes… Read More »Finish up horizontal stabilizer and start elevators
Pictures don’t do it a great deal of justice because the dimples appear to be WAY more warped than they are. These skins actually feel almost flawless – I’m certainly happy with how this surface is turning out. I have now finished all of the forward spar flange rivets and… Read More »Guess what!?! More riveting
I have begun one of the most significant sections I have come across yet on the plane and that is the completion of the horizontal stabilizer. I knew that there were going to be a lot of rivets because I spent so much tie drilling, deubrring, and dimpling all of… Read More »Dimple and rivet the horizontal stabilizer
Once again, not a terrifyingly exciting evening, but one that definitely saw some progress. I was able to spend several hours out just dimpling and getting all of the parts ready to go for final assembly. I also spent a good deal of time just reading the manual making sure… Read More »Dimpling the horizontal stabilizer
Here we go again with the primer! I think we are getting pretty good at it though. Still some problems to work through with measuring cups and dispensing from the cans, but so far it is going well. We have also trimmed the time down from marathon sessions to something… Read More »Priming once again
I think I will have built this plane three times over before I’ve actually completed it the first time. I had the entire HS clecoed together, match drilled, and ready to roll, except of course that it wasn’t riveted together. So naturally you have to take it all apart, deburr… Read More »Horizontal stabilizer deburring
Unfortunately it has been a while since I have made significant progress on the plane, but sometimes life gets in the way I suppose. It has been a busy travel week for work and also a stretch of inhumanely hot and humid weather that made it tough to work out… Read More »Horizontal stabilizer match drilling
Through the help of my dad (Prime King) we were able to divide and conquer a lot of work today. He was able to help me prime all the parts that attach to the two main spars of the horizontal stabilizer (doublers, etc.) and get them ready to rivet together.… Read More »Priming and assembly