Wednesday 31 March 2010

Making Good Progress


Spent 3 hours in the work shop today working on the Stabiliator Skeleton Assembly and as you can see from the picture above its taking shape quite nicely, most of the work to date on this part has been preparation deburring, filing, drilling, sawing and priming and I'm very pleased with the results on this section of the build.

Still one of the hardest challenges is setting solid rivets properly and of the 24 AN470AF4-5's I set for the counter balance brackets I drilled 6 out as I wasn't happy with how they were sitting. One positive is I used the right rivet tool and as a result haven't flattened the heads of the rivets this time.

I would imagine I'll have the HS ready for Nigel's inspection by the end of the Bank Holiday weekend, plus I have 4 other half skinned parts that need signing off so the rivet gun will see some action over the next week or so. If all the work is approved I'll move on to the last bit of the Empennage Kit the tail cone which is timely as I paid for the next two kits yesterday and the fuselage and wings will be shipping from Vans soon and should arrive end of April or early May.

I've also downloaded the wood cutting plan for the wing stands so once everything is finished I'll be building that and I'll also have some more room in the workshop when the weather improves as some of the over wintering plants will be able to live outside.