January 18, 2006

This is Dave’s last day here. He has to leave for the airport at about 4pm to catch his flight back to Australia.

So, now that the wings are all done inside, it’s time to get the skinny on the skins. This is how far we got when……

This happened. In this pic, it’s all cleaned up and glued after the trip to the ER. I’m hoping it won’t scar, but the doc said that it’ll probably leave a line. We had the wing skin peeled back over the wing dolly, and taped in place. As we were working our way down the rivets, the tape let go and the wing skin came flying back down and clobbered me in the head. It didn’t hurt really, but I knew it hit me. I asked Dave if it looked bad, and he said, “You’ll find out in a minute coz all the blood is about to run into your eye!” Lucky really that it wasn’t my eye.

Well, we set ourselves some goals. First was an engine start which we quickly realised wasn’t going to happen. Next was getting the wings on. We thought we might manage that, but it turned out to not be the case. If I hadn’t needed to go to the ER, we probably would’ve got at least one wing completely finished, and made some prgress toward getting the other wing skinned. Oh well. Overall, considering the time we actually put in each day (not as much as we should have), we did accomplish a fair bit.

Thanks for taking the time out and coming over to help out a bit Dave, it was much appreciated. Hope your trip back was OK, and that you didn’t have to put up with the screaming kids!

1/22/2006 4 hours.

As well as fuselage stuff, I tackled the rest of the wing skin on the wing we started on my own. I have to say, when Dave was here, we got the hard bit done. The rest really wasn’t too bad on my own. My arm is a bit sore from passing it through the rib holes, but no pain no gain! At least I didn’t slice myself open today!

Here’s the skin all riveted! It feels great to get one finshed!

Here’s my arm. The redness is going away now. It’s been about 3 hours sonce I got back from the hangar and I’ve had a shower. Your arm will likely look like this too when you’ve done your wings! I should start a new page for injuries!