December 3, 2020
Today was spent finishing the nutplates on the wings for the wing root fairings and then back to electrical work. All of the rear plane electrical was completed along with the antenna connectors. Then moving forward I added snap bushings and adel clamps to the 2AWG power cable and finished off the cable with the terminal to bolt it to…
December 2, 2020
Yep, there are some nutplates that I forgot I needed to add to the wings. So much of the day was spend drilling, dimpling, and riveting nutplates. Of course I learned why the plans have you install the fuel tank screen AFTER the nutplates are installed. Not huge but definitely added time on to this item. Also got the remainder…
December 1, 2020
Today started with bolting in the magnetometer which would have been easier had I had non-magnetic hardware when I riveted the bracket to the frame. Oh well. Then it was on to installing the three antenna doublers in the bottom skins. I attempted to bolt on the transponder antenna only to damage it from overtorquing the nut. Honestly I don’t…
November 30, 2020
Today marked the start of the cabin top installation. Which meant lots of cutting/grinding and being covered in fiberglass dust. But at least it was a warm day for late November. Also today I mounted the pitch trim servo and crimped/attached the connectors.
November 27, 2020
Fabricated the spacers for the horizontal stabilizer before mounting it to the airframe. All in all looks good but there were six rivet that the plans did not have riveted that I finished up and also noticed the squeezed rivets on the trailing edge were not properly squeezed. These rivets were done before I realized that the hand squeezer “walks”…
November 25, 2020
Whew, does that feel good. The wing skins are riveted which makes the wings basically complete. Also today the ailerons were attached. If only there wasn’t so much more to do before attaching the wings to the fuselage…
November 24, 2020
Knocked off the brakes today. Nice to have that done. Also finished up battery box I built yesterday. Now time for turkey!
November 23, 2020
I have been bouncing around a bit lately and not getting a ton of items finished. Today I was able to check off a number of items and the biggest on being the ER tank installation (ended up taking 58.5 hours). Installed the connectors for the roll trim servo. I can now properly say that the wings are just about…
November 22, 2020
Man, today was a day that was an uphill climb. Right off the bat, when I removed the air valve used to leak test the tank the Loctite 515 made it stiff. Removed, I used acetone to try to cleaning the bung fitting. Then I screwed in (temporarily) the new AD4 fitting – mistake. This messed up the threads. Ugh,…
November 21, 2020
Started with crimping the BNC connectors for the ELT antenna and the COM2 antenna before moving back wheels. Oops, started the fuel tank pressure testing on the right side. Made Lee’s suggested plates on the wheel pants bracket and got them glued on. Tomorrow I will add some rivets and then do the final assembly of the mains. Then it…
November 20, 2020
Today was a bit of jumping around. I got a number of the wires pulled through the airframe, mounted the magnometer bracket, got the static ports ProSealed. A big chunk of the day was spent on getting the wheels mounted. The Matco wheels/brakes was pretty straight forward to figure out the order of installation, wheels on the axles the next…
November 19, 2020
A big chunk of this week has been spent ordering electrical connectors and hardware. For me a painstaking process to determining what is needed, documenting it, and ordering it. It wasn’t only buying fun, I had four packages with items to return too. I’d much rather be building. I did manage to get a couple things accomplished today, the correct…