Fuel Tanks

Starting on the fuel tanks by removing the protective coating.

 Drilling out some holes.

Marek and Eva stopped by to see our progress.  We're dimpling the skins.

Stefan has the tank sealant out and is starting to cover some of the rivets. 

The ribs are in the tank and I'm going back through covering up all the rivets with sealant.

The tanks stood up to the soapy water/pressure test.  No leaks.

Attaching the fuel tanks to the wings.  The fuel tank is on the ground in this picture.

Wings are shown here with the fuel tanks attached.  Next up are the ailerons and flaps.  One more month or so and then will be taking the summer off to get my pilot license.

Outboard Leading Edge

Here is one of the outboard leading edges of the wings.  I cut the wood cradles from some plywood to hold the leading edges in place.  I am on the table putting clecos on the backside of the skin to secure the internal ribs in place for drilling.

The ribs have been clecoed in place and ar ready for match drilling.

After drilling, all the parts were taken apart.  The drilled holes were deburred and dimpled and them primed. 

Once the parts were dried, it took two nights and abour 7 hours to rivet both leading edges together.  The rivet gun is in the right hand and the bucking bar is inside in the left hand.

 Mike Gibbons showed up at the front door in his airplane in a surprise visit.  We spent about an hour riveting one of the leading edges to the previously completed wings.  Thanks Mike.

Stefan came out the following day to help me with the other leading edge skin.  He also built the wood cradle stands for the wings as shown in these pictures.  Thanks Stefan.

The wings are that big and are going to be even bigger once the ailerons and flaps are complated.  Things are really coming together now.  Fuel tanks are next.

Top Skins

My hangar neighbor Daniel and his wife Angela took Zu and I up for a flight in their Beechcraft Bonanza.  Daniel has me take over the final approach for landing and says keep it around 80 knots.  This being my first ever landing, it seemed fun until we were about 50 feet from the ground.  At that point I said, 'You got it from here'.  He then says, 'You're doing just fine.'  Slightly panicking, I respond, 'No, really, I'm not ready for this.'  I then saw him sit back in his seat, hands off the controls, and realized he was serious.  About 20 feet off the ground, much to my relief, he grabbed the controls and set her down.  Thanks for the fun, Daniel!

Zu is all smiles as we climb through the broken clouds.  Daniel wants to pull some Gs, but since Zu is pregnant, I got him to settle for some soft turns around the clouds. 

Back to work.  The top skins are shown here clecoed to the ribs and main/rear spars.  The top skins are two sheets of metal for each wing.  There are some reinforcement plates under the inboard side of the skins for additional support where passengers walk.

Daniel is helping me lay out the drilled and sanded skins for deburring and priming.  The longer skin is outboard, while the shorter skin is inboard.

Dimpling is a lot of work.  Each of the couple hundred holes has to be dimpled to receive the rivet heads.  This allows the final skins to be smooth on the exterior surface.  You've got to be careful not to miss the dimple shaft and hit the metal.

Here I am priming only one set of the skins.   I broke the dimple bit about 40 holes from being done with all the skins, so I moved forward with the right wing skins only, which were fortunately all completed.  I got a new dimple bit about a week later and then finished with the left wing.

Stefan got back to the hangar after spending about a month working on the basement buildout at home.  I know how much he enjoys priming and fortunately there was a lot to do.  These are the left skins completed after the new dimple bit arrived.

Zu helped with about 4 hours of riveting.  I sat on the table and riveted while Zu held the bucking bar.

Stefan helped with the other wing.  We were able to rivet the whole thing in two days and about five hours of total riveting time.  Stefan says, 'eh' for good, 'couple' for hit it again, and 'too much Jimmy' when I get carried away.  So it sounds something like: eh, eh, eh, couple, eh, eh, eh, eh, eh, couple, couple, eh, eh, eh, too much Jimmy!, eh, eh, couple....for five hours. 

The top skins are on.  Taking a brake from work, we met another neighbor Bill flying an RV-8.  He says it was the first one completed and it is a sweet looking plane.  More motivation to keep up the work.

Ribs / Rear Spar

Here we go.  Ribs are layed out and ready for sanding.

Priming the ribs took me so long that I met the security guard Gene on his late night rounds of the hangars.  What a surprise he must have had when he knocked and I opened the hangar doors wearing my breathing mask and dirty gloves while music was blasting in the background.

Stefan was able to help secure the ribs to the main spar.

Ribs done, what's next?

Priming has become my least favorite part of the building process.  The materials are toxic, smell awful, and are tough on your hands.  Moreover, the parts look bad after I'm done because I'm hand brushing and never figured out the paint gun.  I guess I'd rather have ugly internal parts instead of corroded parts that used to be pretty. 
I just can't wait to cover them up with the skins. 

The hangars are very quiet at night.  It's dark and isolated and a little spooky (you should see how fast I run to the port-a-potty and back), so you can image my surprise when at about 9pm and I hear this voice through the walls, "Hey, what station are you listening to?"  I'm thinking, who the hell is out here with me as I yell back "92.5."  Then I hear, "What are you doing over there?"  Before you know it, I'm having a conversation with the wall about my project.  After a few minutes, Daniel came over to introduce himself to me in person.  Being the only two people crazy enough to be at the hangars at night, we not surprisingly got along quiet well.    

 


All done.  Next up is the top skins

Main Spar

The wings arrived in two boxes on November 2, 2011, just two days before my Dad arrived to help jumpstart the project. 

Here I am with Stefan and my Dad.  We are just about to begin working on the main spars, which you can see laying acrosss the table.

The first job is to rivet the spar extensions to the main spars.  Stefan is seen here sanding one of them.  My Dad is helping sand the other one.

 The extensions have been riveted on the main spars.  You can see the silver extensions now coupled to the gold spars.

The wing access/fuel tank nut plates have been riveted to the flanges of the spars.  These nutplates will enable removal of the skins to view the fuel tank and interior of the wings.

Stefan and my Dad worked on the riveting of the nut plates.

I worked on countersinking every one of about 300 holes.

More countersinking.  You can see the shavings come off the holes.  The countersunk holes will receive the dimples in the skins.

My Dad and Stefan are attaching the tie down plates for the wings.

Four days later, we've completed the main spars.  They don't look much different to anyone but us.  Thanks for your help Dad!

New Hangar Space

We're official now with our own hangar space. 

The tailcone doesn't look so big now.  We are excited to begin work on the wings in the next month or two. 

Look at what we found just parked out in front of the airport restaurant - an RV-10!

Tailcone