Author Archives : Chris French

Productive Day on the Front HS Spar


Why not follow up yesterday’s mistake with another one, grrr. After spending 1.75 hours fabricating the Front HS Spar brackets I realized that I failed to cut the base down to 1″ from 2″ which meant I removed too much material. So I got to make another set. Blerg. Good news is that I knew what I was doing and…

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Damn it, first unrecoverable mistake


So after all the prep work on the Elevator trim tab when trying to fold the trailing edge I messed it up. It wouldn’t affect the flight characteristics but visually it would always bother me, so I will rather redo it. Ugh. But it was bound to happen at some point. “Employment” work and helping another builder cut 3 hours…

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Sunday, funday lots of riveting


So it was nice and quiet, just me in the hanger today and I was productive. I was able to finish up all the final prep work, knock out the three remaining skins that needed ribs riveted, and then rivet in the rear spar on the Elevators. That finished I cut the Elevator horn weights before moving on the last…

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Back to work!


After playing hokey for five days to go mountain biking in Moab it was back to work. Cleaned up the tailcone light mounting before continuing the riveting the the Elevator trim tab bracket and the Elevator ribs.

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Three days of mountain biking in Moab


Needed a little break from the plane building after 14 days straight. And truth be told Carl on SkyPond and I had been planning this trip for a long time. Carl is a stud and has ridden Moab trails for the past twenty years making him the ideal guide, or so I thought. Let’s just say he loves the extreme…

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Wing tip and tail lights, check


So I didn’t expect this step to take so long. Total of 8.25 hours for the three light, well technically five light boards. The tail frustrated me, there is an aluminum “C” bracket to attach the light. The problem was it was too big to fit the Van’s supplied tail cone. I sanded fiberglass, ground aluminum and after 90 minutes…

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Let the Elevator riveting begin!


Lots of riveting today. My skills are slowly improving and there were only a couple rivets that I had to redo. The day started with priming the Elevator skins. And finished with work on wing tip light installation from FlyLEDs (needed a break from the riveting).

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Spoke too soon about riveting


So evidently there are a number of small steps I had yet to approach, so Elevator work continued. Drilled the trim hinge and primed the smaller parts. Next I took on cutting and sanding foam blocks for the edge of the Elevator and Elevator Trim. Those took much longer than I would have expected. Oh and I also scuffed the…

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Elevator Work Continues


Big progress today, all deburring, dimpling and drilling completed. Tomorrow I should be able to start riveting. Woohoo. Nearly made my first major mistake by dimpling the read spar. Thankfully the trim hinge is drilled based on the skin and not the spar. Whew.

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Finishing up the rudder


Well I thought I had a day left to finish the rudder, that was too optomistic given my lack of skills It was still a good day however with a growing skills set with riveting.

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More electrical and priming day


One of those days where you leave scratching your head because you put the hours in but it doesn’t feel like a lot of progress. Oh well. Worked on the ignition wiring and long wire runs from the panel to the rear avionics tray. Finished up the day priming rudder parts, fingers crossed tomorrow I will have a completed rudder.

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