Tonight I assembled the bellcrank and pitch servo bracket. Everything was straightforward except the mounting of the two angles onto the bell crank plate. The alignment of the bolts took some negotiating, but after a few attempts, I was able to get it installed and torqued.
Today I made a start riveting the right bottom skin onto the right wing.
It want easier than I thought, perhaps because I’ve done it before on my previous set of wings. I didn’t finish the job, and expect it will take a number of sessions to get this set done.
It’s been a month without work on the plane, partly due to work travel, but mainly because we brought home a puppy, Bruno, and he has been requiring my help in the evenings.
Now he is sleeping in his crate all night, so I can get some time back in the garage.
Tonight I completed another step in the fuse attach section. Relatively easy riveting, nothing that needed redoing.
My new garage setup is looking good and I’m almost ready to start building again. Everything in the garage is on wheels except for some storage racks in one corner. I’m planning to make up some storage bins for nuts, bolts and washers, but other than that I’m ready to start. My goal is to be back into the swing of things by the end of next week.
Sometime in June, Stuart Transport arrived and picked up my wings and fuselage, shipping them back to Vans. With those out of the garage, the remaining parts were relatively easy to pack and stow into a 20 foot U-Haul.
I built a wooden crate with shelving for the tail feathers. I lined it with blankets, and used shrink-wrap to secure the parts to the racks. That worked out well, and I am going to put wheels on it and keep it as a storage rack in the new garage. hardware and small parts were wrapped and stored in cardboard boxes. The horizontal stabilizer went into my wing cart, and was strapped firmly against the cart, and the cart against the wall of the truck. I temporarily installed the forward-most bulkhead in the aft fuse, using clecos to secure it in place. Then I set the aft sure on the dolly I had built for my Quickbuild fuselage. I cut some foam strips which ran on the dolly lengthwise to help support the curvature of the bottom of the fuselage. Then I used shrinkwrap to secure the aft fuse to the dolly.
After a 12 hour drive, we arrived at the new house, and everything was still very secure. Unloading was uneventful, but space was limited due to the ongoing construction happening on the house.
A few weeks later my new fuselage arrived from Vans, which prompted some cleanup and rearranging in the garage. It’s good to have the new fuse now, it looks great and primer is definitely heavier and looks more like I would have expected.
As far as I can tell, all my parts and tools have made it with no noticeable damage.
We are in the process of moving from The Bay Area south to San Diego county. With everything going on, I’ve not been making much progress on the build. The goal is to be moved by August, although it might be a bit later if the house isn’t ready on time.
In parallel I’ve been talking to Vans about my Quickbuild kit. It’s been found to have defective primer, which isn’t a big surprise as I’ve noticed it runs off easily and I found some corrosion on the wings. Because I’m moving, and because my kit was perhaps the first one impacted, I have priority in the queue. I decided it would be best to replace the kits, and to coincide with my move.
So most of the work I’ve been able to do in the last 6 weeks has been removing systems and components from the wings. This was a bit demoralizing at first, but I quickly started thinking about how to do everything better the second time.
Tonight I installed the nut plates onto the bulkhead parts that make up the aft wall of the baggage compartment. It was trivial, but a little tight around the flanges. I managed ok with my hand squeezer in the vice.
Tonight I started on the autopilot servo mounts by tapping threads for the control rods.
The last week has been busy, and my time in the garage has been spent cleaning up and reorganizing. I picked up a small tool cart that I can wheel around the garage to keep tools where I need them, without getting them scattered around the place. The cleanup was long overdue, and make me feel more organized.
I also spent time reading and researching the wings, and going through the chapters covered by the Quick Builders.
The first parts of the wing kit I will be working on are the landing lights, at least the housing and covers for the lights. These are located at the ends of the wings, and were obscured by my wing stand. To work around the issue, I modified my wing stand by building another carpet strap just inboard of the existing one. It was slightly challenging as the wings were in the way, and I didn’t want to lift them out of the cradle. I worked around that, and they came out ok.