Isaac Shultz's Sonex Project

 

The days leading up to my scheduled first engine start were very hectic, I had only a few tasks to complete but I kept finding that one part that didn't get ordered and of course I kept myself busy checking, rechecking, and tripple checking anything that could go wrong on the big day. I tested out a Facebook livestream and found that I had the wrong browser type and it wouldn't livestream unless I downloaded their stupid app. Then I tried using YouTube to capture the moment my engine would come to life, but YouTube doesn't give small channels like mine access to all the features like livestreaming.  I found the answer to all my problems: Twitch. Twitch is actually designed for people to watch others play video games but I discovered that it is actually very versatile. It did everything I wanted it to do and had the capability to do much more if I ever wanted to play with all the fancy features.  So I had my engine almost done, it was waiting on one little AN6 Ni...

While I was waiting on my last few parts to arrive before starting the engine, I did some spring cleaning on the garage. I blew all the dust out and in preparation for working on the tail, rearranged some of the stuff to allow for the extra length the stab adds. While the plane was out on the lawn, I was able to get some killer pictures. I don't really have enough work done to do a proper write up but I did at least get the horizontal stabilizer bolted on.  The first engine start got pushed back because I was waiting on parts in the mail. Now everything has come together and I'm ready for first the engine start but I'm going to keep working on the tail in the meantime. So I will be livestreaming the start up Tuesday afternoon April 7th. I will post a link to my account on a website called twitch. It is super easy to use all you have to do is click it. No account, no log in, no download. You can watch on your computer or mobile device. If you can't...

Over the last couple weeks I've been checking off everything left on the firewall forward installation.  I painted the inside of the cowling with an acrylic paint to protect the fiberglass from oil and engine gunk.  Here I used spot filler to fill all the little depressions. I used a old card to push it into the surface and then let it dry.  Once it was dry I sanded the surface flat. Here I glued in the eyeball vents. Here I installed my new spark plugs and routed the cables from the ignition coils to the spark plugs. I gapped the plugs according to the aerovee manual.  Here I installed the CHT probes and then reinstalled the intakes. Here I finally got to glue in the blockoff I made months ago for the fuel filler neck. I gooped it up with plenty of RTV and slid it in. After plenty of sanding and priming I finally decided it was time to stop the endless cycle of sand and prime and throw some color on.  ...

So everyone is kinda freaked out over corona lately. My gymnastics competitions have been canceled, and so have my classes. This has been great for building, I've got all week and maybe more to get some great work in.  I have been doing all the last things on the cowling before it's time to prime and paint. The final few things were adding my quarter turn southco fasteners, finishing the air exit cutout, and doing a final sand. (if you can ever even say final and sand in the same sentence) Then it's time to prime. The southco process started by going to southco's website to order an assortment of different sizes. When I completed my order the shipping cost came out to like $40, which was clearly wrong. I was ordering less than 20 studs. It would fit in a flat rate envelope easily. So I scrapped my southco order and went to Aircraft Spruce to order my cheese platter of sizes. The shipping there was much more reasonable and I combined it with some other items I n...

Over the past few work sessions I have ironed out all the little things in my electrical system that remained to be done. The big items were: the OAT sensor (outside air temperature), the ELT (emergency locator transmitter), and my comm radio and transponder antennae.  The OAT sensor had to be wired in to my computerized instrument display. It had been a while since I'd worked on electrical system stuff so I got to gauge the effectiveness of my old notes. I'd give myself a 6/10 it was workable and after some cross referencing and thinking about it I was able to reconstruct how everything had been wired but it was not as easy or clear as I thought they would be when I wrote them. I added a lot of clarification and a couple sketches to help make the next time I go poking around behind the panel a bit easier. The actual wiring job was easy enough I had to solder one side and crimp a fast on onto another wire. Then all I had to do was dive under the panel head first and route th...

The cowling has had pilot drilled hinges held on by clecos for a while now. It was time to updrill and rivet. I updrilled from the pilot #40 hole to the rivet sized #30 (about 1/8"). An important step I performed was sealing the fiberglass. After the holes were updrilled and carefully deburred, I dropped just a little bit of super glue into the hole to wick into the fiberglass and help prevent deterioration of the hole.  With the holes updrilled all that remained was to rivet the hinges on. The cowling looks so much cleaner now that it doesn't have 30 odd clecos hanging off, ready to catch on something at any time.  I also worked on my side panels for the cockpit interior. These started life as scraps of cardboard tapes together load a crude template but we're refined until I had perfect patterns. Once I had reliable patterns I cut them out from corrugated plastic. I played with what I wanted to the designs to look like and eventually settled on some pocket l...