November 12, 2006

I got to the hangar way too late today after going to the auctions again. I got the painting I wanted. It was 4:30pm by the time I got here, and it’s a school night to boot, so no midnight oil for me.

I carried on with the empennage stuff fairing stuff, and got the right side completed. Obviously this went a lot quicker than the the left side. It’s always quicker doing something for the second time right?! Here, I’m match drilling the longeron to the inspection cover and the fairing strip.

I decided to modify a G clamp to take a dimple die instead of trying to balance it all together like I did yesterday. I don’t know why I didn’t do this before! An easy mod, and it helped no end. I bet there are amultitude of places this would come in handy if you didn’t have a small yoke for your squeezer like me.

Here’s the fairing strip in place. I was 1 nutplate short for the inspection cover. For some reason, we’re at the point where we’re out of everything before we’re done with it. I had to borrow 100 LP4-3 rivets off Mike yesterday, and now I need a K1100-6 nutplate! What’s going on? I’m almost certain I didn’t use it anywhere else, it’s too small! I even have a big bag of assorted nutplates I got from Sun N Fun one year, but no K1100-6 in there!

While I was back at the empennage, I remembered I needed to secure a bunch of stuff. I safety wired the trim tab hinge pin, and I put a cotter pin on the trim actuator arm.

I also put a cotter pin in the tailwheel axle nut.

I needed to secure the brake lines to the gearlegs somehow, so I put them inside a polypropylene tube and glassed around them with some lightweight glass. It looks like the leg got broken and it bled some and I bandaged it up! The loose looking stuff is peel ply.

I normally play soccer on Monday evenings, but I think I’ll have to forget that this week. I still have a ton to do before next weekend, so I need all the time I can get. On top of all that, our house is a construction zone too and we have the in-laws coming for thanksgiving! Oh god, we’ll never be ready! I have a bedroom to finish remodeling. Will there be an end?!