October 18, 2020
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…
October 17, 2020
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.
October 15, 2020
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…
October 11, 2020
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…
October 10, 2020
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).
October 9, 2020
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…
October 8, 2020
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.
October 7, 2020
Finished up the rudder, sans rounding the leading edge. So next up was the Elevator. Made good progress today but damn 3 hours of sanding and deburring, shesh.
October 6, 2020
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.
October 5, 2020
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.
October 4, 2020
I ran out of time in Minnesota to get all the wiring of the panel finished. Today I knocked off the avionics wiring and ELT. There were of course the occasional brain slip that required rework but I still walked away feeling good about the progress.
October 3, 2020
Took a break from the Rudder to get the ELT and GTR20 Remote Comm mounted to the rear avionics tray. Also, worked on the center console where I mounted the rear passenger headset jack and USB charger, plus the pilot/co-pilot jacks. Finished up the day prepping for tomorrows work on the avionics wiring.