First one, from Dave’s iPhone4. Shelley has a wider shot that’s higher res.
« Archives on August 9, 2010
Forgot about Saturday
8 hours.
Saturday was a pretty huge day in its own right. The night before, I’d cleaned up the workshop and put all the tools away so I could start making a fresh mess. I gloated over my handiwork in drilling the wing spars for a few minutes, then got going on the flap rigging. The flaps are attached at the trailing edge of the wing with a strip of piano hinge. The right side, the inboard edge of the flap rubbed against the fuselage, which didnt allow it to travel its full range of motion. So off it came, and I filed and scotchbrited off enough metal so that it did. However, in that sentence is contained about 4 or 5 iterations of trial, error, and scratching the crap out of the flap with the file until I got smart and put some tape around where I’d be working it. Eventually, it fit fine and was able to swing up and down, and in the ‘up’ position, the skin lay flat on the belly. The left side wasn’t a problem.
After that, it was time to reinstall the flap motor and rig the flaps. This is where the first setback occurred. The flap motor was one of the first things I did on the fuselage, so maybe I screwed it up, but there are many reports of the flap motor channel interfering with the canopy latch bar. Supposedly, they fixed this in the matched-hole kit, but I have a matched-hole kit and I’m telling you now, it ain’t fixed. What I had to do was put a 3/16″ spacer between the bushing block and the F-705 bulkhead to move the canopy latch bar forward enough so that it would clear the flap motor channel. I also had to change the rivets on the upper part of the flap motor channel to flush AN426 rivets. After this, I was able to see daylight between the latch bar and the channel. Of course, this also meant that the pushrod between the latch handle and the bar was now about 1/4″ too long. Put that on the list.
Then came the weird ceremony of drilling the flap pushrod holes. I”ll post pictures of this whole mess when I get the chance.
Fwoo!
9 hours.
Nine. Hours. I had a list, a big one. Much things to do. Because I’m utterly beat, I’m not going to boil it down to bare essentials. Most of the morning I spent chasing the elusive sub-$100 engine hoist. This was not to be found anywhere west of Covina, so I settled on secondary prey: A replacement for my ailing cordless drill. The 14v DeWalt served well for 15 years, but now it drains batteries, the motor’s getting weak, and the replacement batteries only lasted about a year. So today, I picked up the ultimate badass cordless drill, a Makita BDF451. 18v, 3 speeds, and the torque of a 71 Chevelle SS. This hunt took most of the morning. I didn’t get on the stick until about 11am, which sucked, because like I said, I had a list.
David was due to arrive at about 1pm, but before, I got the tank brackets drilled, and a few other things. Honestly, I was doing so much stuff, I forgot exactly what I did and in what order, but these are the things that got done:
Vent lines made
Fuel lines trimmed, ends fitted
Canopy pushrod remade (because of the spacers I had to put on the c-611 blocks)
Rudder cable links made (should be using AN turnbuckles, those links are stupid)
Tank bracket platenuts installed
Triangles marked on wings for belly skin lineup
This process was not without its setbacks. Braided steel hose sucks to work with, and we’ve got the poked fingers to prove it.
I got pictures and video, I’ll post them tomorrow when I’m not too tired to think straight.