Today is a great day! The first full part of my plane is built! After weeks of working, making mistakes, fixing them, I finally have something to show for all my hard work. Now that it is done, I have a new problem: Where do I store this part to keep it from being damaged […]
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Day 12 was a day that proved something. When I was starting this project, I had two options. I could setup in the garage at home, or I could setup in my hangar at the airport. The hangar is of course ideally suited to the task, but I chose the garage for two reasons: 1) […]
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On this day, I spent most of my time working on ONE rivet. If you are a builder, you likely already know where this is going. I recently posted about this problem on FaceBook and I got a list of possible solutions that I tried on a practice piece and in the end, I did […]
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It’s been a busy few days, and I have not had time to update my logs, so here is three days in one! Day 9 and 10, I was focused on closing up the rudder skins. I started off with attaching the top rib to the skin. This will be the last back riveting I […]
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Today’s job was to rivet the stiffeners to the skins. The primary technique required is back-riveting. I quite like this technique as it is easier to do than shooting rivets the normal way. The gun fits nicely over the shop head and can bounce around a bit without destroying your work like I did with […]
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Tonight, I drove the first rivets for the empennage! The task was to assemble the bottom rib and attach the reinforcement plates and nut plates. The first part went off without a hitch, and I ended up with a pretty nice looking part that kinda looked like a spaceship! Seeing as I have not riveted […]
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Today’s task was to get the trailing edge countersunk. I decided to do some fabrication first though. Looking ahead, I know I’m going to have to pro-seal my trailing edge and find a way to clamp it while the sealant cures. I saw a technique I liked that used a piece of aluminum angle to […]
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Today I picked up with the task of match drilling the skins and ribs of the rudder. I kinda score in that I discovered MOST of the holes were already punched to “final size” at the factory. Some recently developed kits came like this, and I guess I lucked out! I felt like the trailing […]
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Today, I had a bit of time before bed and could not resist doing a bit of work. The mission was to prepare the trailing edge and fit the skins onto the skeleton of the rudder I have been working on. The first step was to deburr the rudder skins, which I had neatly tucked […]
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Today started with marking up the rest of the skin stiffeners and a trip to Canadian Tire to get a new set of aviation snips. The new snips worked well on the strait cuts across the stiffeners, but when I had to get into corners, they were a bit bulky and did not do a […]
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