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.

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.

I finished up all I planed to on the empanage last  week.  I am waiting for the fiberglass and wiring until I put the whole thing together.  It was really great to see the whole thing together.  The rudder and elevator bolts take some patience to get on but other than that it all just bolts together.  I order the wings on Friday and Saturday got a letter from Vans letting me know they will ship the week of June 22.  I hope to get my honey do list done by then and get the garage on order to build the wings.  I want to get the wing cradle done before they arrive as well.  Started to move parts of the empanage to my parents house for storage and put some parts I am keeping at my house away from kids reach.  I am going to miss riveting for a while, but need to break to get things done around the house.

I am now finished with the tail cone and have started the work to assemble all the tail parts.  I had my father in law help me rivet the rest of the tail cone together (I was on the inside).  Today I began assembly of the empennage.  All is fitting together well.  I am learning quickly how to remove and replace bolts between the elevators and the HS.  The HS trailing edges line up almost perfect, but one trim tab has a 1/4 inch warp in it.  I might have to replace that before I am finished with the plane, but can wait for now.  I need to hurry up and finish the assembly so that I can move the prats to my parents house and Heather can get her car back in the garage.

The main reason behind todays post is I finally got the wife out in the garage to help me rivet and she did great.  Yes I am wearing my flying headphones to rivet, but I needed to let Heather use my hearing protection.  I hope that Heather and I can finish the other side tomorrow.  Heather turns out to be great at riveting and I think she secretly enjoys it.  We will have to see how much I can get her to help in the future.