Monthly Archives: September 2013

Elevators 30 (4.0 hrs)

This entry was posted in Elevators Empennage on September 21, 2013 by Peter

I really hated rolling leading edges until today. Well, I still hate it, but not as much. I’ve been using a pipe given to me by another builder that is about 1″ in diameter. It works well, but I was still getting a ripple. My solution was to use two pipes. A smaller diameter pipe, and the original 1″ pipe. I started with the smaller pipe and make sure that the edge got a good bend and then moved up to the larger pipe. This worked extremely well.

Here in the first photograph you can see my first attempt with rather substantial wrinkling between the clecos.

And here are the results using two pipes for the roll. What a difference! I don’t call anything perfect, but this is darn close!

I redid the original bend with the smaller pipe and was able to take out many of the wrinkles, but now all as you can see here.

Completed products.

I temporarily installed the elevators onto the horizontal stab for storage. They’re on backwards I might add, but it was easier to put them on this way with the way I had the bench setup. Its just temporary so it doesn’t matter. There are still several items to complete on the empennage but they seem to make more sense for when its attached to the fuselage. (Things like the elevator trim servo, drilling the horns, etc)

Wing Inventory 2 (2.0 hrs)

This entry was posted in Wings on September 20, 2013 by Peter

I didn’t realize how many parts were in the small item bag. I knew there would be a lot, but I thought most of them would be rivets and items I already had labels for. I’m not sure why I thought that, as in retrospect it was a pretty silly thought. The small item inventory took longer than unpacking the crates and organizing all the large items!

I have a few more things to organize and check, and the inventory will be complete.

Here is the container I’m using for nuts, some bolts, and washers.

Mostly rivets.

Lots and lots of nut plates.

Wing Inventory 1 (2.0 hrs)

This entry was posted in Wings on September 18, 2013 by Peter

Finally the wings arrived!! Van’s had about a 3 week delay due to being behind on the manufacture of the leading edges. The kit arrived on Tuesday, and delivery couldn’t have been easier with lift gate service courtesy of Old Dominion Freight Line. Five business days from Oregon to Pennsylvania is pretty good!

Unfortunately, on Tuesday I did not have time to crack open the crates and peek inside. As the outsides showed no damage I felt confident all the parts made it successfully. But just in case there was an issue, I did not want to delay an inspection. In fact, I came home from work early today with the specific goal of starting the inventory and organization of the kit. In my head I had built up this enormous amount of parts, and while there certainly are a lot of parts, there were not as many as I’d imagined.

After two hours I had the crates emptied out and all of the large items inventoried, organized, and stored. This weekend I will try to tackle the smaller parts.

Here are the crates before opening.

The first thing you see is the wing tips on the left. They’re pretty big.

End results for the large items. You can see the spars, and wing tips on the top shelf. The 15′ fuselage longerons are on the second shelf. Bottom right you can see all the ribs. There is a metric sh*t ton of ribs! My deburring wheel is going to get lots of use.

You can see I’ve numbered the shelves. I listed the item location as I did the inventory so that 5 months from now I can still find everything. I plan to do the same for the small items.