October 7, 2020
Elevator, let’s see how this goes
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.
Author Archives : Chris French
October 7, 2020
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October 6, 2020
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.
October 5, 2020
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.
October 4, 2020
Back to Avionics Wiring
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
ELT and Remote Comm mounting
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.
October 2, 2020
Prep finally done so there was riveting!
Productive day with no major screw-ups requiring rework. Whew. Finished prepping all the parts; cleco, drill, debur, dimple, countersink. Lots of steps to get to the point of riveting. By late afternoon I pounded some rivets. Should have the rudder finished up in one more work day.
October 1, 2020
And so it begins, starting with the rudder
Missing parts for the Vertical Stabilizer, missing parts for the Horizontal Stabilizer. So I started with the Rudder. Went smoothly until I realized that I was missing R-1007 brackets. After searching I figured out they are in a back ordered bag. So I made my own after taking measurements from a completed RV-10. Ugh, slow down already…
September 30, 2020
Finishing and Firewall Forward kits counted, and I am done!
Everything is now consolidated, I had rivets in probably 100 different bags, now just one bag per size. Same for the other hardware. Also all the parts are labeled so when the plans call out for a specific part number I won’t be searching for which bag and kit to look. That should make the build go much smoother. Plus…
September 29, 2020
QB Fuselage/Wing consolidation and counting
Whew, so many bags of nuts, bolts, pieces, and parts. A disappointing part of the process is there are many bags with the same parts. So much of today was consolidating the same parts. Quick build fuselage and wings are 100% counted and thankfully no new missing parts.
September 28, 2020
Empennage start, err back to inventorying
So today I planned to start the empennage but on the first page I found a missing part. In one of the bags there was supposed to be the three different VS brackets. Unfortunately I had two VS-1010-P parts. Ugh. A call to Van’s put me on the list for the replacement part, which should have already been delivered to…
September 23, 2020
Kit Inventorying Day 2
Only one missing bag of parts and five back-ordered items. Unfortunately one of the back-orders is the nose gear, which on other models in the past has been a 4 month back-order. Ugh.
September 21, 2020
Kit Inventorying Day 1
Lots of unwrapping, counting, and marking off parts to begin the “official” build.