January 22, 2021
Another day of checking off boxes. I got the tail strobe wired up and threw down a thick layer of micro on the VS tip fairing. While that cured, the final skin got riveted. Wow, that felt great – even if it was quite loud bucking the rivets. The fuel servo was next up and thankfully the throttle and mixture…
January 16, 2021
Sooo, I finished up the sanding/priming of the right elevator trip fairing before moving on to wiring the overhead console lights. I needed to get the console finished so it could be attached to the cabin top. This meant putting in the eight single lug nutplates that I had to order way back when I last worked on attaching the…
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 16, 2020
Today a few more items were banged out. Got the first tail section top skin riveted on, drew up on CAD the revised battery box and COMM antenna doubler. Ordered those to be fabricated along with another Left Upper Panel piece, which needed to be updated since I switched from Lightspeed to dual P-Mags. Fingured out a bunch of connectors…
November 13, 2020
Damn, what a frustrating day, it wasn’t that anything went horribly wrong. Just one of those days. On the positive side, I did manage to get the left ER tank 100% bolted on, all that remains is running the fuel lines and tank vent. I keep going back to how much effort it was for the mid bracket (4 hours).…
November 12, 2020
Started the day installing the end ER tank brackets which went pretty smooth. Next was a bigger challenge getting the outboard tank mounts positioned. This seriously took way longer than I would expect but it has to be tilted so gravity moves the fuel to the inboard side of the tank, the wing tips have to fit, and there has…
November 9, 2020
Finished up the deburring of the holes, counter sinking spar holes, cleaning the parts, and finally priming them. Cue the riveting, today I seemed to not have my head on straight. Half the rivets had to be drilled out either due to incorrect assembly or crappy rivet setting. Ugh, one of those day. But I did get the rear spar…
November 4, 2020
There is a lot going on at the end of the Tail section. Today was spend getting all the pieces prep’d, fitted together in the correct order, and preparing for riveting. Oh and riveting too. Too focused on riveting to snap any pictures. Shame. Shame. Shame.
November 3, 2020
After riveting the belly it was time to move on to the sides. More clecoing of J-channel and figuring out how everything lines up. Fun to see it coming together and looking like something. And nice that all of the rivets are accessible, unlike the Horizontal Stabilizer.
November 2, 2020
Started clecoing the belly skin to the skeleton frames. Then on to riveting, yes there are an enormous number of rivets in the tail section…
November 1, 2020
Started on the tail section on Halloween. I didn’t take a lot of pictures early on the process so this post represents 10/31 and 11/1. Brackets made, angle aluminum cut. Tons of parts to debur, J-channel to cut and match drill. A bit tedious…