I haven’t written about building my airplane in a long time. Part of the reason is because I haven’t been doing much fabrication in a while. Most of my time has been getting caught up at work, and getting a bunch of parts ordered and on their way.
Anyway, I want to document where I’m at on the build and get caught up with my builders log.
Things done already:
05-25-2008 got airplane and unpacked everything (8 hours)
09-12-2008 got fastener kit and also got cleveland wheels. I found some 8.50×6 tires on craigslist from a guy that is running floats so I picked those up. Got my wheels and tires mounted. (4 hours)
10-06-2008 Mounted the brakes. One problem was that the disk that the bracket mounts to is so small that you are forced to use an an4 bolt, but I really wanted an an5 bolt in there for strength. In the end I made bushings that give an an5 bolt the an5 shear strength with the smaller head. This turned out real nice. I also got the gear mounted. (8 hours)
01-06-2009 Mounted the tunnel to the firewall (3 hours)
02-08-2009 started working out the boot cowl. (10 hours)
03-03-2009 Welded up bushings and tabs on the ends of the elevator trim torque tubes. (2 hours)
03-03-2009 Mounted the stringers after splicing them together. (2 hours)
03-03-2009 Mounted the brake lines. (2 hours)
03-07-2009 I mounted the brake lines in the main gear legs. I didn’t like just running soft tube so I make a bulkhead fitting, and ran rigid 5052 tubing with braided stainless break line. This solution is simple, clean, light, and it keeps the brake line out from the tire. (8 hours)
04-25-2009 Finish up the boot cowl (8 hours)
There are some things missing, but I’ve been real busy this summer so not as much progress as I really want.
Now that it’s winter again, I’m going to start really picking up the building, and I’m going to do a better job documenting.
Today, I spent the entire day in the shop and I mounted the autopilot roll servo. Overall I like the mount, but it’s not as parallel with the movement of the stick as I would like it to be. I’ll talk to trutrak on monday and see what they think. I may remount it, but if they say it will work just fine then I won’t worry about it. (8 hours)