Fuselage
We ordered a quickbuild kit (although we went rather slowly), and decided to do the fuselage before the wings. I kept adding more and more fuselage pages!
The quickbuild kit arrives
Our quickbuild kit arrived November 11th, 2002. Wings and all. I recruited a couple of buddies from work to help unload it from the Roadway truck. We had som...
Interior topcoat
Didn't take any pictures of us actually laying on the topcoat, but here are some finished shots. The grey matches the middle of the seats. Coincidence? Nope....- 2004
May 9 · 8 hours
Yesterday, I didn't get to go to the hangar because I thought I'd keep 'her indoors' sweet by taking her flower shopping, and then planting them all with her...
May 16 · 5 hours
Some of this 5 hours was spent douing electrical, so you can look there to see what's been going on... Nothing smoking yet!
July 18
Here are the shots as promised of the centre console that I'm trying to develop. I'm hoping to put the throttle just aft of the fuel selector, and then also...
August 15 · 9 hours
Today was a fuselage day. Last night, I stopped by the hangar to measure up for a new center console design. Then, when I got home, I hit the CAD tube, and r...
August 17
By popular demand from the RV-List, I took some better photos of the Matco parking brake valve, and the external stop I made as part of the doubler to the fi...
October 10 · 8 hours
Cameron came by today to prime some parts, so I quickly prepped the fuselage skin behind the canopy and it's stiffeners so I could shoot them at the same tim...
October 24 · 8.5 hours
Cameron was by today, so I took advantage of him by getting him to drive all the rivets for the turtledeck skin. This took us quite a while, with me inside b...- 2005
March 20 · 7 hours
Today was the day I had to start the centre console plug. I can't really get the inside of the plane finished now without having the centre console in place....
March 22 · 2.5 hours
Tonight on the way home I stopped by the hangar to check the console for fit in the plane. I had to trim a bit off the piece that is going to form the top, b...
March 23 · 2 hours
Tonight I stopped by the hangar again to trim up the rear triangular pieces to the exact size. I wasn't there long! Then once I got home, I put them onto the...
March 24 · 4 hours
Over the last few days, I've been tinkering with the centre console at home. This has basically involved some filling and sanding, filling and sanding. Why d...
March 28 · 6 hours
I've been making steady progress on the centre console for the last week in the evenings when I get home. I've been doing a bit here and a bit there, wheneve...
April 3 · 4 hours
Today was the day I found out that fibreglass is not my bag.... The stuff truly does suck. Anyways, not to be to discouraging, I learned a lot today. One is,...
April 4 · 2.5 hoursto April 5
Last night after footy (soccer), I went to the hangar to inspect the console... It seemed OK, so I pressed on and laid up the front half. Then, went home to...
April 8 · 3 hours
Tonight, I spent a bunch of time fixing up the plug for the centre console and also the instrument panel. I basically cleaned it all up, filled any voids tha...
April 9 · 4 hours
Today was the day where I was going to do this thing properly. I got to the hangar this afternoon later than I'd have liked, but I still made significant pro...
April 10 · 6 hours
Today, I laid up the other big side of the mould, and reinforced all the corners. I added an extra layer of fat mat all over too, except for the big side I d...
April 11 · 2 hours
Last night after football (soccer), I stopped by the hangar to lay up the final piece of fat mat to the large area of the mould. It didn't take long. These a...
April 18 · 3 hours
Over the last couple of days I've stopped off at the hangar to wrap up the centre console mould. First I finished up the front half fibreglassing, then tonig...
April 24
On a more positive note (see Fuselage 4 for the negativity), I trimmed up the centre console mould and it's looking good. I also connected the two halves tod...
May 1
I also spent a couple of minutes filling up any voids on the centre console mould today. There wasn't very many, and I mixed up way too much micro for the ta...
May 8
After I'd done painting the panel, I started on the centre console again. First task was to wax it WELL. So, a couple of coats and a buff between each, and t...
May 15 · 7.5 hours
Last night, I spent a couple of hours wet sanding thepanel, ready for when the rub down transfers arrive. They've been made now and sent, so they should be h...
May 22 · 8.5 hours
I accomplished a heck of a lot today, and it made me feel good after yesterday's panel disaster. The whole day was spent on the centre console, and it's real...
May 23 · 0.5 hours
I stopped by the hangar as promised this evening on my way home, and sure enough, the part was ready! First I removed the front portion of the mould. It came...
May 30 · 2.5 hours
After getting back from a weekend in Chicago (went to see England play USA at footy, and see family), I went to the hangar to do some more console work. I go...
May 31 · 10 hours
Today was a long day at the hangar! Probably one of the longest I've put in for some time. It's nice to have a long weekend, and we got today off as well! Bo...
June 5 · 9 hours
Over the course of last week, I put in some orders for various bits that need sorting out. I ordered a bunch of fittings from Spruce, and the banjo adapters...
June 12 · 4 hours
It was pretty humid today, so it wasn't very nice at the hangar at all. To top it off, I didn't have the camera with me. It was in the car, but my wife took...
June 19
In between FADEC wiring, I painted the tail wheel spring again to cover up the band that I missed last time. The weather today has been great, and the paint...
July 16 · 8 hours
After I did the washers for the panel, I moved onto the fuel pump assembly. Namely, putting it in the plane proper and routing a fuel line from the pump forw...
July 17 · 7 hours
This weekend has been a pretty good one at the hangar. It's been pretty warm, yesterday was rainy so it was horribly humid. Today was much better though, whi...-
July 18 · 2 hours
This evening, I stopped by the hangar to apply colour to all the parts I primed on Sunday. Nearly everything got painted the same colour as the interior of t...
July 24 · 7 hours
Over the course of this week, I did some wet sanding at home of some of the parts I painted over the weekend. The orange peel was so bad coz of the humidity...
August 7
This evening, I messed about putting the trim indicators into the centre console faceplate. Here's a pic, just for the heck of it. I still have to do some la...
October 9 · 8 hours
Today, I finally got round to putting the longer bolt in on the throttle quadrant for the friction lock. I'm a bit of a dummy though as I forgot completely t...
October 13 · 4 hours
I needed to epoxy in some nuts to use for the screws that hold the faceplates on the centre console. I finally got round to doing this today too. It's not pr...
October 16 · 8.5 hours
I spent the whole day working on centre console stuff, mainly getting all the control cables figured out. I received my order from Van's that consisted of a...
October 23 · 9 hours
Continuing on with the fuel lines... These were a right royal pain in the arse! I got my order through from Aircraft Spruce which had some more fuel line in...
November 6 · 12 hours
While we were mucking about with the cowling top, I decided now would be a good time drill the firewall flange across the top of the nose. I drilled, Steve c...- 2006
January 22 · 4 hours
Time to make sure everything on the fuselage is ready for the wings. Something that needed to be done was the AOA Pro tubing. I made another hole in the side...
February 5 · 9.5 hours
Other things that needed to be done before the wings go on were the tank brackets, and the gussets to the spar.
February 10 · 4 hours
I went to the hangar this evening to do a bit more preparation for getting the wings on for good. First thing I did was cut off the all that 3/8" tubing stic...
February 19 · 8 hours
Since I had to mix up some proseal for the AOA ports on the wings, I figured it would be a good time to bond the OAT probe into the intake duct. While it's n...
April 28 · 3.5 hours
I came by the hangar tonight, but spent a lot of time chatting with visitors, so I can't really put down the full 5.5 hours that I was there. I'll be back at...-
May 15 · 2 hours
No hangar tonight, but I did do some work on the plane. I tried to do the lettering on my centre console with the Decal Pro stuff I used for my panel. I'm a...
May 21 · 9 hours
Everything is done now inside the fuselage, except for putting the floors in and then the centre console, so we worked on getting the floors sorted. The floo...-
May 22 · 2 hours
Tonight, I stopped by the hangar to make the seat floors removable with the centre console in place. One seat floor spans the centre tunnel area, so I had to...
May 30 · 7 hours
Some more time at the hangar today! I flew the cub again first thing this morning (06:30!), and got into wheel landings. My first one was a bit bouncy, and w...