4.5 hours
Drilled/deburred the rudder spars and ribs, finished fabbing r-917, matchdrilled control horn assembly and bottom spar. Fluted and prepped upper ribs. Going to do the counterweight next.. Hope I don’t have to sand it. Lead dust isn’t cool.
« Archives in December, 2005
Rudder Skeleton
One more thing….
Remember that riveter’s tape? the really slick stuff with the outsides adhesive and a clear non-sticky center? Don’t leave it on overnight, or for a couple of days. You peel it off and it leaves the green sticky part on your airplane for you to remove later. These are some of the things we learn the hard way.
More Rudder work
1 hour
Finished riveting on the stiffeners and began prepping the skeleton. Going to wind up fabbing the R-917 shim out of a spare HS404 because I used part of the strip I was supposed to fab it from for shims in the HS somewhere. Feh.. No biggie. I will sneak what time I can this week and prep the skeleton. No idea how long it will take to get all the bits prepped, countersunk, drilled, dimpled, and primed.
Some editing
Some shuffling going on.. I decided to put the pictures from the activity of mid november 2005 a little closer to its chronologically accurate point. So all the HS and VS pics should now be located further down the page, or you can look in the archives.
Some thoughts on power
Over the last couple of days, I’ve been pondering engine choices. I really like Jan Eggenfellner’s Subaru H6 package. I trust his judgement, and he has several happy customers who have installed it on their airplanes.. I’ve seen one fly. It makes neat sounds. The thing I don’t like about it is the price. I know all about how important it is to stay in business to continue to support the product and develop new things, and I realize he’s probably not making money hand over fist on this. Problem is, by the time you’ve put the Egg H6 on your firewall, plumbed everything, and bought what you need to make it work and work safely, you’re into about 28 kilodollars and that’s WITHOUT a prop.
I’m the worst.. I’ll oversimplify a complex problem, then not understand why it falls apart, which is surprising, given my line of work. However, I do know a complex problem when I see it and I’m well versed in learning from the mistakes of others. But here’s how I see it: Eggenfellner doesn’t open his engines. Gets ’em right out of the crate, new or barely used (5k price difference in the package), strips off the garbage that you need in a car, puts on a bell housing and PSRU, modifies YOUR engine mount, assembles it, along with the necessary cooling plumbed and mounted, then crates it up and sends it to you. Well, hell.
A quick search of car-part.com turns up an EZ30 for about $3500 and below. I can’t find a price on a new crated one, but a JDM EZ30R with the aggro cam, plastic intake, and AVCS goes for $1700. No ECU, but you can get that fairly easily too. Maybe, just maybe, by doing this myself, I can save enough for that electric constant speed prop.
Because the days of finding a mid-time lycoming for 8 grand that’ll be worth a damn are pretty much over.
More later. Sushi now.