“FUN” WITH STRINGERS Today was a rare occasion of just having to gut it out. In some of the builder logs that I read, some people really enjoy the straightforward task of making stringers or ribs for various parts and pieces, but for some reason these stringers just drove me… Read More »If you don’t have anything nice to say, it’s probably about stringers
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… Read More »It’s beginning to look a lot like… well… not much
What a marathon, but it really feels great to have one of the first moving parts of the airplane done. When I first began the elevators I had no idea how involved they would become, but this truly was one of the more involved and challenging parts of the build… Read More »Elevators = DONE
With the rudder squarely in my rear view mirror, I knew the day would come again soon whereby I would be expected to roll some leading edges and rivet them together. This was a particularly challenging skill for me to embrace last time and I ended up drilling out a… Read More »They see me rollin’… leading edges
I’m glad I won’t have to say that, or at least to a profound degree at some point in my future (why do I also feel a solid dose of Karma coming my way just for even tempting fate with this phrase…). This weekend I spent two days at an… Read More »If I knew then what I know now…
These elevators have a surprising level of complexity to them and have taken longer to assemble than I had originally estimated. With this part of the process, it isn’t the large volumes of repetitive work that slow you down, it is the small detail work that takes a long time… Read More »Stairway to Heaven – aka “The never-ending elevator”
Today started off innocently enough with me getting back into a rhythm after being out the past 10 days on vacation (which by the way was magnificent – thanks for asking). I completed riveting the leading edge spars on each of the elevators and then moved on to the counterbalance… Read More »Tank sealant and rivets – breakfast of champions
NEW TOYS For starters, yes, yes I am quite pleased with myself for that delightful pun. If you have read even one other post prior to this, you’ve already prepared yourself for it so hopefully it didn’t sting as much. All kidding aside there was some excellent progress made yesterday,… Read More »A real “uplifting” session on the elevators
PRIMING PREP Today was the kind of day that I have been looking forward to for a while. I have spent more days away from my plane than with it recently and am glad to begin trying to turn the tide on that. Well, minus vacation next week of course,… Read More »Major elevator work day
I’m not sure why I did, but I put off actually ordering the new parts. I guess somewhere in my mind I wanted it to work out, but I knew that this elevator skin was beyond repair. Anyways, here I am – time to order my new parts. I laid… Read More »Ordering new elevator parts (and tools)