February 2, 2021
Wow baby, that was a bigger pain than one would think. Lots of nutplates – check. Metal forming – check, minimal room for riveting – fucking check. Only had to drill out two nutplates that interfered with the rivets to the fuselage, that would have been nice to note in the manual. Yep, I’m a little salty. Still remaining is…
January 31, 2021
Oh I’m sure something will pop up but this morning I finished the wiring behind the panel and was happy to see the autopilot servos were detected, firmware automatically updated, and the looked good. I may have accidentally run the aux fuel tank pumps for a second, so I know those work too. I still need to wire the wing…
January 30, 2021
Ugh, I am tired of wiring but there is still work to be done. Hopefully tomorrow I can finish up the avionics/electrical. Notice no pictures, yeah it pretty much looks the same as before I started. Yes I am salty. But as a break from wiring, the flaps are now on and connected to the flap tube. That means time…
January 28, 2021
Guess who started the day with sanding? And who finished the day with sanding? This guy. But the sun visor blocks are installed and the flox/micro turned out well. From there it was on to the cowling which needed nutplates installed and since we were on nutplates, why not install them on the spinner bulkheads. I still have all the…
January 27, 2021
The ignition cables are now better organized with spacers between to ensure no cross firing. Got the screws installed in the tail fairing, which turned into more work than I expected. Well there were two nutplates involved… Before the window installed I needed to get the sunvisors mounted. With the doors on I could find the best location and then…
January 26, 2021
Whew, big day with lots of progress. Kicked it off with cutting holes for the defrost fans in the glaresheild. Friday is hopefully the day to install windows and it needed to be done before then. Then it was on to fabricating the door lock brackets. Not too difficult but one has an odd bend to match the door that…
January 21, 2021
Big project today, getting the doors halves glued together. The prep involved drilling for more clecos, sanding (this seems never ending), mixing up lots of epoxy, flox, and taping off the fuselage. The actual gluing and affixing the doors to the didn’t take a ton of time. Lots of clecos and clamps to hold things in place. As there seemed…
January 20, 2021
There I said it – I am not fan of epoxy, flox, micro and sanding. My day was kicked off with 150 minutes of sanding and cleaning up. But the cabin top was to be installed! Whew. Next up was finishing up the door prep. Those door pins, filing the correct amount off the ends of the rods to get…
January 19, 2021
Big progress on the cabin top today. I figured out a way to apply micro to the vertical surfaces which greatly reduced the waiting time. All told today I major sanded twice and applied micro three times. I think after tomorrow morning’s sanding session I should be ready to attached the cabin top to the airframe! Also up today was…
January 18, 2021
So I started the cabin top fairing this morning, which meant three hours of sanding. The raw fiberglass out of the Van’s mold is wavy and full of fabric patterns so it was go time. That was a fun morning. I got a layer of micro laid down on the flat top section and put a first coat to smooth…
January 17, 2021
Whew, those doors with the PlaneAround and Aerosport parts sure do require a lot of time and effort. Heck a lot of time figuring out what to do as well. Anyhow, the mechanics are complete for one door. The second door I’ll bang out tomorrow. Today I got the PlaneAround 3rd latch installed so that helps make tomorrow easier. Also…
January 15, 2021
Seems I will be living in the world of fiberglass and epoxy for awhile. The engine cowling hinges are now all drilled, this took two people – one to squeeze and one to drill. After all the filling of the sides and back there is poor alignment on the front corners. Got a layer of flox down to start filling…