Sunday, November 3, 2013

Epic weekend!!!

This is one of those weekends you wish you could have every weekend.  Let me tell ya about it.  Friday evening Travis and I went to see the movie "Ender's Game" which I thought was a great movie.  It doesn't hurt that my favorite book growing up was the impetus for this movie.  After the movie we came home and he helped me finish up a couple of rivets in the tail cone that I just couldn't reach.

Saturday was a good day as well.  I was able to do lots of little prep work and even got in a little riveting on the center section.  You can see the pics below.  I also got to do a project visit for a fellow EAA chapter member that is building an RV-7.  He is a long ways ahead of me and is almost ready to hang his engine.  That turned out to be a super visit where I not only got to take a bunch of pictures but I also found out that there are several chapter members building RV's as well.  Thats something I didn't know about the Redmond EAA chapter since the RV guys seem to be a minority there. Amy came out in the early afternoon and we started doing a little clean up of the garage and we were able to reduce the stuff we have stored out there by a significant amount.

Sunday however was the day that made the weekend.  It was also the day that I found I made the worst mistake of the build but more on that later.  The day started out early with a little more rivet work on the center section, followed by breakfast out with a couple of friends whom you have all heard me talk about before.  Jeff and Harry came up from Puyallup to help me work on the plane today.  Oh My God!  I was amazed at how much work we got done today.  Obviously they both know what they are doing better than I do as they both have built an RV.  Anyway we were able to finish up the center section riveting, get the floor skins cleco'd and screwed in, and most excitingly we got the center section mated up to the tail cone.  Its really starting to look like an airplane fuselage now.

I was so excited about the progress that we made that when they left I decided to do a little more work.  Well, now the bad news.  I drilled the 904H doubler on the center section backwards.  None of the holes would line up when I tried to get it all put together so after about an hour of scratching my head I finally figured out what I had goofed up so I came in and ordered $35 worth of parts from Van's to fix the problem.  Fortunately it will be relatively easy to fix.  Anyway, off to some pictures!

Jeff (on the left) and Harry clecoing the skin onto the center section.  After the cleco's were in we prepped and riveted this whole skin in a little over an hour.  I was shocked at how efficient the whole process was.


Jeff drilling out some holes on the floor skin just prior to us mating it up with the tail cone.

There it is.  Center section mated up to the tail cone.

And here is the mistake.  That Silver piece with the H shaped bottom (904H) is the part that I put in backwards when I drilled it out.  Now I have to replace it and the two gold uprights (904C & D) that are on the left side of the picture.  Of course this means I have to remove a bunch of rivets....no fun.

Side view of the fuselage with the skins cleco'd on.

Center shot of the fuselage.