Well this summer has been good and bad for plane building. I spent two months in Afghanistan which slowed down the build quite a bit. Today I finally attached the tail cone for the first time and now I see how big this thing really is. It barely fits in my garage. I am running out of aluminum pieces to put together which means one thing… Fiberglass time. I hate fiberglass, the main reason I went with the RV10 was because I did not want to have to work with composites. I have started to work on the canopy some and it is going ok, but makes a lot of dust so I do it outside. This was a great plan until the weather reminded me it is winter. I have all to flight controls done and my panel is almost built out. I have one more tray to come in and then I will be ready for the avionics. I am also ready to order an engine. I am getting a 0TSMO engine that is completely unassembled so I can learn how it all goes together and works. I hope to update this blog a little more frequently as well, but always check my builders log and my gallery as they are always up to date.
So I now have a large monolith in my garage as my fuselage is standing on end while I rivet it together. My hand is healing well, but I have a hard time bucking rivets with it because I still have no feeling in the thumb so I can not tell if the bucking bar is at a angle or not. I am almost done with the rear fuselage and have started to work on the firewall and forward fuselage. This part of the build is fun because it seems you are always building something unlike the wings where you are building one giant thing. I am getting excited to see something I can sit in soon form in my garage and am still struggling to see how to make it all fit while keeping my wife’s car in place.
Well after a long time off from building I worked on the plane some today. I finished the wings in early January and was supposed to get the fuselage kit in that same time frame, but Vans delays and Partain shipping delays got it here on the 17th of February.
This was one month and one day after I put my hand through the blade of a table saw (a non plane building related story). My hand is healing well, but my left thumb has no feeling yet so it makes it hard to do certain things. I am taking it slow and hoping it will continue to get better over time so I can get back to full speed building.
Well I am moving right along on the wings now and need to as my fuselage ships at the end of December. I started the install of my pitot tube mount. I am going with the Gertz heated pitot tube as I hope to have an IFR capable aircraft. The only part of my tanks that I had to patch of when pressure testing was the nut holding the vent line to the inner most rib. I forgot to hit it with some proseal on the inside. I am currently looking into lighting options for my wings and tail. There are so many choices, but I am really leaning towards LED lights for the wing tips and strobes and maybe HIDs for the wing tips as landing lights. We will see how the money is and keep looking at options.
Well I have been working hard on the wings now and here are the results. I hope to start the tanks in the next few days. I am sure this will be a huge mess, but should be fun none the less. I am really happy with the way the wings are looking. I have had a good bit of help from my mother and another builder that lives down the street from me. The wings have been drawing a lot of attention to the garage and now I get interrupted more than I used to, but I just love talking about flying and building so it does not seem to matter much. Well back to pounding those rivets, don’t forget to check my Builders Log for day to day updates on the build.
So I thought the summer would bring me long hours of building bliss. My first problem was I waited to long to order the wings so I did nothing for over a month. Next life came in to the picture and my job started to take up all my free time (even cut in to my cycling!). The last two weeks were spent doing family vacations that I planed on spreading out, but work forced them to collapse in to a two week time period and now summer is over. I did get some work done on the wings, I have all the ribs attached to the left spar and am about to put all the ribs on the right spar. I hope to build the wing cradles this weekend and get the rear spars started. I can’t wait to get some skins on these things so people can tell what they are. I am looking in to lighting solutions and autopilot servos as well as a heated pitot tube as I will need all this before I can close up the wings. I ordered some corrugated tubing from Vans to run the wires in the wings and drilled the holes to 3/4″. I hope to get the tubing this week so I can get it installed as well.
So I have now finished the left main spar and started on the right one. So far it is going together well, but it does become very monotonous with all of the countersinking goes on. I hope to get the right main spar done by this weekend and then I can start working on the wing ribs. I also need to take some time to build the wing stands and clean out the garage some so that I can fit the stand in it. I am trying very hard to keep my promise with my wife that her car can stay in the garage, but not sure how long that will last as I am quickly running out of room. Here is a picture of my oldest daughter Ashley helping me do some deburring. It is nice to have someone help out now and then.
So the wings are here now. I got them on the 10th of July, but it was my 11 year anniversary weekend so not much time to work on them. I was able to get the kit unpacked and put away. I also built the leading edge cradles and broke down all the crates. On Sunday I started to work on the left main spar some. One thing I noticed was how much harder the directions are to understand on the wings than the tail cone, it is going to take some community help to get through some of this.