With the holiday weekend I was able to get a ton of work done! The wings were nearly done, all that remained was to fabricate the cutout and retainers for the landing light for the right wing, and fit the wingtip.
Before I started working, while waiting for my dad, I set up all of the tools i would need, drill driver, drill bits, screws, dimple dies, rivet puller, clecos, the like. I looked at the mess of small pieces and decided that I needed somewhere to keep them while working. A quick scan of the workshop revealed the magnetic parts holder. Perfect!
Later, when I reached for a drillbit I realized what I had done. Placing the steel drillbits into the magnetic field of the parts holder magnetized the drillbits.
As with the left wing, I used the provided template to position the hole. I used reference points on the template and the wing in order to line up the hole perfectly. I stepped back, and did a quick sanity check
Looks good and level. ready to transfer it to the wing. I used a sharpie to draw the hole's outline onto the skin.
Sharpies are a vital part of any metalworking toolkit, because they do not scratch the metal, or leave a corrosive residue. I use different colors of Sharpie to designate different actions, blue for alignment lines, red for cut, green for drill.
Once the hole's outline was transfered it was ready to begin cutting, though the radius would be very difficult with the dremel cutoff wheel. Lucky for me I had a trusty Uibit!
I plotted out locations to drill in order to reduce my workload with the file.
Zip! Zap! Bathroom! The Unibit enabled drill cut marvelously and true. With the holes cut I prepared to use the dremel again. I loaded up the cutoff disc into the tool this time a bit quicker and more confidently!
When cutting with the Dremel, I have found that the most important part is good support, if you are waving the dremel around without it being supported my anything, you will get a terrible wavy cut. But, as I found, If you have a semi fixed pivot/support point, your cuts drastically improve.
The most difficult part of this task was definitely cutting around the leading edge. The angle made is very difficult to make a straight cut, but through a series of small carefully placed extensions of the cutline, I was able to slowly pass over the entire leading edge.
When finally I cut free the entire piece of aluminum, I was left with sharp uneven edges. The solution of course was to file them back. I used 3 types of file just like on the other wing, in fact doing the other wing gave me a ton of experience with which to quickly and efficiently do this wing.
First I used the aggressive files to remove lots of material, then utilized the fine files for the detail work. to top it all off, I used a scotchbrite pad to clean up the edge, making it buttery smooth and free of stress rising imperfections.
The lense retainer works such that you have 3 pieces, a fixed top retainer, a lens shaped to fit inside the wing and match the leading edge, and a removable bottom retainer. The retainers make a slot for the plexiglass lens to fit between the retainer and the skin.
On this side I needed to fabricate the retainer and dimple the 3 screw holes. The retainer needed to be countersunk and I installed nutplates for the screws in the backside. Dimpling the skin was easy this time, all i needed was to use my custom dimple die made of a chunk of aluminum with an appropriately sized countersink in it, and the screw i intended to put in the hole. Then you squeeze it with a pair of vise grip pliers until the skin deforms enough.
The top retainer was little more than two strips of aluminum one thick and skinny the other thin and wide stacked on top each other. then you rivet the whole assembly to the inside of the skin and voila.
Now came the tricky part, trimming the lense. The lense comes oversized so you have to trim it down a bit to make it fit in the spot. I measured and marked the cut lines on the lens. for this task I used the permagrit attachment on the dremel which has tiny diamonds embedded in it, to make an extremely durable abrasive tool.
After every cut with the dremel it is important to remove stress risers on the plexiglass. I learned that plexiglass is very temperamental and will crack at the slightest provocation. I used slow controlled passes with the sanding block to sand off the major ones first, then i could accelerate , and was just about perfect, I could move on the a small square of less abrasive sandpaper to finish the edge.
Now that the lens was cut roughly into the right size it was time to fine tune the size using a special tool that excels at accidentally sanding fingers. Using this sander I could slowly walk the edge in shorter and shorter until it fit perfect.
Once I got the fit where I wanted it I put the lens and the retainers away to be installed during final assembly of the plane along with the pitot static tube I made.
The final task before the wings go to the airport for storage is to fit the wingtip. As of september 8th I have not yet finished the wingtip, but I did start work on it. The major parts of fitting the wingtip are:
1. Remove obstructions, this entails a lot of fiberglass dust and cutting with the dremel
2. Drill the wingtip, here you have the wingtip in place and drill through the pilot holes on the wingskin, this prepares the wingtip to be riveted in
Above I marked the locations I needed to cut with red hashlines. When I last left off I had just started fine tuning the wingtip to steer clear of any obstructions with the wing structure.
Thank you to all the wonderful people who have helped me get to the point where I can have so much to write about every week! I thoroughly enjoy homebuilding!
Mr John
Paul Shadwick
Stan Whitfield
Ron Sipple
Ralph and Joyce Shultz
Paul and Beth Duff
Paul Hockin
Nicholette Shultz
Gordon Fern
Anon Anon
Jeannette Shultz
Mike David
Jonathan and Julia Wolfe
Jon Palmstrom
Laurie Burns
Donna Mickel
Dana Baker
Mrs Nadine
Eric Johnson
Tammy Reap Hayes
Jeff Shultz
Brandon Lenart
WP Marsh
Michael Couillard
Mr Anonymous
Joe And Judy Green
Mrs Brenda
Mrs Cathy
Paul and Vickie Laberge
Judy and Roger Kemmerle
Fico Gonzelaz
The purpose of this blog is to document and share my experience of building and later flying an airplane. In the first portion, I will thank all the wonderful people who donated to me. Then in the second section I will post a building update, hopefully every 3-4 days ,explaining what I have done in detail and with pictures. Finally in the third and last section, I will post my flying adventures, and any maintenance I do. Thank you or your support and interest, I am pumped to be executing this project.