Peter

About Peter

plbarrett.com | Certified Flight Instructor (Single & Multi-Engine, Instrument, and Advanced Ground) | Commercial Helicopter
This entry was posted in Fuselage on by | Open »

My fuselage arrived today, and I was woefully under-prepared. I had seen in the forums that the LTL carriers cannot unload the large crates such as this. Despite knowing that, I had been preoccupied with other things and had done nothing in terms of arranging equipment or friends to help. When the day came, and ABF asked if I could unload… I had to scramble. Luckily, the county has a Bobcat with a forklift attachment at the airport and was able to help me out. I was also luck that Mike and Steve were there to help me.

Here is the initial offload.   

Its a huge crate!IMG_7705.JPG

Proud father!IMG_7704.JPG

First glimpse inside the crate. IMG_7678.JPG

I was not initially planning to unpack or even open the crate today, but Steve and Mike were just as eager as I was, and with the helping hands available there was no reason not to!IMG_7679.JPG IMG_7680.JPG

By the end of the day we had it neatly tucked back in the rear of the hangar where I was able to climb in and make airplane noises!IMG_7702.JPG

Hangar prepped for fuselage 

This entry was posted in Fuselage Wings on by

My quick build fuselage will be arriving this coming Friday. The way my hangar is currently organized, I won’t have any room for it, so I needed to rethink the organization. As an engineer, I’m a big fan of engineer’s paper. I took some measurements of all the basic items in the hangar at the end of last session. And then I printed out a scaled copy of my hangar-mate’s Piper Cherokee. I used scale cutouts to determine the best arrangement in the hangar.

Here is the current arrangement.

And here is the arrangement I planned.

Moving everything wasn’t as painful as I expected. The smooth even concrete floor makes everything a breeze. After my previous hangar, I’m constantly delighted by the perfection that is concrete. The only difference in my new layout and the one above is the position of my fire cabinet.

In the first few photos you can see the back of the hangar where the work benches and shelves used to be. I’ve cleared this area out, and this will be the fuselage’s new home.  

Here’s where the fire cabinet resides. Not ideal… but I’ll keep thinking on it.     

The new home for the workbenches and shelves.   

After all of this, I finished countersinking the flap braces, cleaned up, and called it a day.

Wings 38 (5.0 hrs)

This entry was posted in Wings Wings - Structure on by

When I arrived at the airport today I saw a T-34 sitting on the line. From afar, I didn’t take much notice. There are plenty of T-34Bs around, but as I got closer I realized this was a T-34C, in which I have about a 120 hours from my military days. Unlike the T-34B, the T-34C is not available as a civilian aircraft so this must be from a Navy unit… most like Pax River. The turbo mentor used to be the aircraft used at NAS Whiting Field, and NAS Corpus Christi for primary flight training, but it has been replaced by the new T-6. Fleet military units still use it for aerial spotting and other misc tasks. Its way cheaper to fly and maintain than other fleet aircraft. Odd to see one at KDMW though. I didn’t investigate further… I have my own airplane to build… 

Back to my airplane. I have to determine how I’m going to run my pitot lines. I will definitely be doing a heated pitot tube with AOA, so really I have three runs to do. Wiring for the heat, AOA pressure, and pitot pressure. Currently I have the wire run and the pitot, but I’ll need a third spot for the AOA run. In the picture below from left to right you can see where I plan to run conduit for the wiring, and the pitot run. The tooling hole on the right will be used for AOA.   

My primary task for today was to dimple all the bottom skins.   

After dimpling, I attached the skins so that I could match drill the flap brace.    

I began, but didn’t finish, countersinking the flap brace. There are no instructions what to do here, but the best option is to countersink the middle piece so that the soft hinge material needs no dimple or countersink.   

Finally I cut the wing side of the hinges to length.