October 30, 2020
Headed to see my parents in the afternoon so it was short day. I was able finish mounting the Rami Nav antenna to the top of Vertical Stabilizer after starting the fabrication of the doubler yesterday. Also on the Wing front – got the pitot mast prep’d and primed. Right wing skin is primed.
October 29, 2020
Just seven final hours to finish the riveting the Horizontal Stabilizer. I was glad to get this done because the small gaps to reach in with a bucking bar led to some awkward positions and a sore back. Multiple breaks for some yoga stretching was required the past couple of days. The right wing skin was cleco’d and match drilling…
October 28, 2020
Wow, I can admit I’m not the fastest riveter. I check every rivet with a gauge and often have to hit it a time or two extra. Today I pounded around 500 rivets. Just 300 more to go on the Horizontal Stabilizer. Also knocked off was riveting the wing gap fairing. Went to start on the wing skins only to…
October 27, 2020
Not a day of massive visual progress but a good start to the riveting of the Horizontal Stabilizer. I had missed the counter sinking of the front spar and stringers, so that was a few hours. I think what happened is I countersunk the rear spar and headed off for lunch and by the time I got back to work…
October 26, 2020
So I am learning the lesson on how long things take when you deviate from the plans. First, I have to say the past two days designing parts and figuring things out myself has been fun. But…it is very time consuming. Take the PH Aviation flap bracket. I chose to design something myself and I think I’m on design rev…
October 25, 2020
The day started with three hours of finishing the Elevators. Whew, this section too quite a bit more effort than I had expected. Will be interesting to see how long the Horizontal Stabilizer takes to assemble/rivet… From there, assembly of the aileron push tubes and aileron roll trim bracket. Fabrication of new brackets for the PH Aviation flap actuator. Started…
October 24, 2020
Man oh man, I thought by early afternoon I’d have both Elevators buttoned up (sans the leading and trailing edges). Ha! The counter-balance attachment (with six tough to reach rivets and rivets of various sized to keep track of) slowed me to a crawl as did Short story, right side is 100%, left side needs the counter-balance and rivets requiring…
October 23, 2020
The day started deburring the remaining parts for the Horizontal Stabilizer followed by dimpling the skins. Sweet Jesus are there a lot of holes to dimple. Then priming prep followed by priming the last Horizontal Stabilizer parts. Not to be forgotten the front and rear spars holes were countersunk. Back to the Elevators, I riveted the ribs and then installed…
October 22, 2020
The day started with a few hours of deburring ribs. Not my favorite part of the build, then I primed a bunch of parts and set them aside to dry. I deburred the edges of the HS skins and then marked with tape the holes that are not to be riveted. Then came the assembly of the entire HS stabilizer,…
October 21, 2020
The morning started with priming parts for the Horizontal Stabilizer. Then an exciting step, hung the QB wings in the rack and got the aileron bracket and Garmin autopilot servo installed. A good chunk of the day was spent assembling the Horizontal Stabilizer Front and Rear spars. Quite a lot of riveting and even more to come. But my riveting…
October 20, 2020
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…
October 19, 2020
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…