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used to be the aircraft used at NAS Whiting Field, and NAS Corpus Christi for primary flight training, but it has been replaced by the new T-6.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.