Tonight I started on the autopilot servo mounts by tapping threads for the control rods.
Garage Clean-up
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.
Bench wheels
I installed a set of retractable wheels on each of my work benches. I had these on one for a few months, and was pleased at how well they worked out. So I added a set for each bench. They have a (combined) 800 pound load limit, which will be plenty more than needed.
Quickbuild Wings and Fuse arrive
Today was a big day! My Quickbuild fuselage and wing kits arrived! I decided to use Stewart Trucking to have it delivered, rather than having it crates and shipped. I’m glad I did, as the whole process was easy and painless. Mike the driver was excellent to work with, and we had the wings and then fuselage down in no time.
The most difficult part of unloading was getting the wings down onto the back of the truck. Mike has 6 pairs of wings, and 5 fuselages in the truck, and my wings were loaded on a rack near the top of the truck. It was slightly awkward getting the wings down, mostly due to the greasy film on the wing surfaces, which is applied to avoid any possible corruption while skipping. Holding a slippery wing over my head, and then trying to lower it down was a bit nerve-wracking, but not very hard. Then we carefully wheeled the cart into the garage.
With the wings off, Mike used the crane to hoist the fuse up, lift it back and out of the truck. With my dolly parked behind the truck, he easily dropped it into position. Weighing in at 600 pounds, we were careful to put it in the middle, and where I wanted it. then it was up into the garage, no problem.
I spent the evening unpacking the plane, and inspecting as best I could. I didn’t see any problems, but I will be doing a through inspection of every step to ensure there are no mistakes. For tonight I was happy to just get the fuse emptied of the various boxes and parts.
Garage cleanup
Tonight I carpeted the fuse dolly, then spent time cleaning out the garage. I used some cheap underlay, and then a cheap carpet, and staples it all down around the sides.
Over the weekend I had broken down my tail kit crate, and last night I built a dolly, so there was a lot of sawdust in the garage. It was really overdue for a clean, so I organized, vacuumed, and wiped down everything I could.
Riveting bottom skin
On Sunday I dimpled the bottom skin. Yesterday I clecoed the bottom skin onto the 6, 7 and 8 bulkheads, along with j-channels and battery angles. Tonight I set a few of the rivets before running out of steam.
Dimpling the holes was easy, and I was able to get it all done on my DRDT-2 dimpler. I needed to prop up the skin a few times, but that was easily done.
Clecoing the skin to the bulkheads required two saw horses, at least 3 feet tall. Since mine were not that tall, my dad made up a pair of cradles that attach to the top of my saw horses. These worked great, and clecoing was easy.
I set a few rivets tonight. I actually squeezed several that I could reach, then made up some practice pieces and set a few rivets using my gun. Since it’s been a while since I riveted with the gun, I wanted to make sure I remembered the right settings etc. 25 PSI is plenty to set 3-3 and 3-3.5 rivets. I taped over the holes around the edges, as these are riveted later.
