January 13, 2021
So the cowling fit is shit. To get it to line up in the back, the front is off – not terrible but off. The sides are the issue. On the pilot side there is a 7/16″ gap. WTF. So today the sides got built up to fill the gap. More fun tomorrow. The cabin top is now drilled and…
January 12, 2021
It started with the cowling. This things is way off, ugh. Even the top (without sanding the air inlets) will need a good 1/2 to 3/4 inch of fairing to make the cowling line up with the spinner. And the sides seams, yep that is going to be a ton of work too. Moving on… With a call to Stein…
January 11, 2021
Oh my, oh my. The bottom cowling was not fabricated ideally from Van’s… Took a lot of cutting, grinding, filling, and sanding to get the cowling to line up pretty well. The sides, bottom, and front all look great. The issue was getting the curves on the bottom to match the fuselage. They are close but there will be some…
January 10, 2021
Whew this was a long day. Started with terminating the CHT and EGT wires in the Garmin GEA24 connector. Then moved on to terminating the other end. The grind comes from the awkward spots to cut, strip, crimp, and screw each wire. That could be a pain but the biggest pain was installing all of the Adel clamps to support…
January 9, 2021
I’m not sure why I put off the Elevator trim tabs for so long but hey they are done now. Riveting, proseal, more riveting. Oh and blind riveting. Once the proseal cures I’ll slide in the hinge pins. The big excitement of the day was finishing up the electrical wiring. I put in the remaining instruments and flips the switch.…
January 8, 2021
The day started with mounting the engine. Only hiccup was “losing” one of the engine mount spacers. But thirty minutes later I found it in my pocket, please don’t ask… Then I got some work done on final wiring/labeling of the pilot switches. The only wiring remaining in the cockpit is the Starter/Mag switch. Probably knock that out tomorrow and…
January 7, 2021
Exciting part first, around 4:30 my engine arrived. And hour later the packaging foam was cut away and she was lifted up. Super exciting! Tomorrow hopefully she will be hanging off the front of my plane. This was another day of lost time… Annual physical/BasicMed exam, cancel oil cooler order, pay for new oil cooler, call FAA about registration (they…
January 6, 2021
This week has been constantly interrupted by non-plane building crap. Bunch of real work and two drives to Denver – don’t ask. So progress has been slowed down. Ugh. One of the slowdowns was getting an oil cooler. I ordered one back in October and ship date after ship date slipped by. Airflow System has a supplier who has had…
January 5, 2021
So I think the tunnel is done. Well actually I want to give it one last cleaning… So today was again shorter than normal due to a two hours IPC (Instrument Proficiency Check) in a RV-7A. Went well and technically I’m free to fly IFR. In reality I have lot of work to do learning glass panel flying. Today began…
January 4, 2021
Late start today but still made some good progress – started with tightening the jam nuts and torque sealing the Elevator push/pull tubes. Then I fabricated an additional rudder cable guide and got it installed, followed by reorienting the rudder cable/pedal bolts to give more room from the rear seat scat tube and bent over the cotter pin in the…
December 31, 2020
Short day today. Adjusted the Elevator push/pull tubes which was a good exercise as I disassembled the front tube to check the thread length on each end. With the Tosten stick grips I cut down the sticks as low as possible and then set the best Elevator Up/Down to the best range. Installed Tosten stick grips and tightend all hardware…
December 30, 2020
For real, I think the spar tunnel is done until the wings go on… Started off adding connectors and drilling brackets made by fellow builder Leo for a set screw need to keep the Tosten stick grips from spinning. Then moved back into wiring mode to work on the connectors that stick grips plug into. That took awhile… Also soldered…