Build Update January 20th 2020: Cowling Riveting and Side Panels

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 locations and a stripe that falls in the shadow of my tilt back canopy arms.

This is a big part of my color design philosophy is to accentuate the features rather than trying to hide them. In this case I am highlighting the shape of the canopy pivot arms .

Obviously these haven't been attatched with spray adhesive yet but I snapped some pictures of a rough installation.

The next steps are to glue the fabric to the side panels, to fabricate the joiner tab between the two cowling halves for the southco, and to continue sanding and blending the fusion of cowling and blister

Build Update April 5 2018: Dissasembling the Aerovee

The engine I bought was already built, and had not been run. My dad and I planned to take it all apart to give me a better understanding of the engine, as well as to identify any problems before they got bad. The Arovee engine was heavy and awkward to move. at the time it was sitting on the workbench with everything installed. Going into this I had only enough sense to tell you which cylinder is the #1, 2, 3, and 4, and I knew some of the terminology, such as crackshaft. I frequently asked my dad "what do you call that part?" we began unbolting stuff in roughly reverse order from the manual (if you're familiar with sonex plans, you're used to backwards) In under an hour we had stripped many of the external parts off and the engine had lost at least 20 pounds! A box was designated as the hardware box, so it'll be like legos trying to find the right bolts and nuts again when I reassemble it. the important part is that they're all together and no...

Build Update August 7th 2018: Brakes, and Glareshield

Today I got a ton of work done on my hydraulic brakes system. I assembled the mount for my master cylinder and through some testing and pretending to sit in the cockpit to get a feel for where I want my brake lever, I located the exact position. I drilled and clecoed the whole assembly. with it in place, the real work behind hydraulic brakes set in. I cut my 12' length of tubing into two pieces, one for each brake. In order for the brake lines to get from the master cylinder inside the plane, to the brakes on the wheels, I had to drill a couple holes in the firewall at the front of the plane. One of the worst things that can go wrong with these brakes is having a line break. If that happened I would loose all pressure and have no brakes. If the brake line touches something, it will likely vibrate against it in flight, if it does that, eventually it will break. To prevent my lines from breaking and loosing their fluid, I use a larger size tubing, that just bar...

Plane Painted

When I flew my plane to OSH23, I saw an artist painting a small depiction of an airplane. She was painting a very small photorealistic scene from a phone image. I could not believe how detailed she was able to make it! She let me watch over he shoulder as she worked. I was so impressed that I commisisoned a similar painting of my sonex. Id like to share that painting with you all. Her name is Rhonda DeGarmo. She has a lot of other work. If you're interested in getting in touch with her please reach out to me and I will pass along her information.

Isaac Shultz's Sonex Project

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