Sunday, December 28, 2014

Its been a good week

I have to say that I am happy with this weeks progress.  I took care of several items that are on the list of things that need to get done before the move to the hangar.  I got to go flying with Jeff and Harry again which is always fun and a great motivator.  And last but not least I had a wonderful Christmas thanks to Amy.  She really takes Christmas to heart and the house is nicely decorated, there are presents under the tree for everybody and there is true Christmas spirit in the house.

Back to the progress of this week.  You recall that last week I made the decision to give up on the center console and that means I had to redo the throttle and mixture cables.  I had concerns that the brackets I fabricated for the engine would have to be re-done but I am happy to report that the new cables use the same ends as the old cables and seem to be the same length so it looks like my brackets will work!  That should save me about a day of work.  Along those lines I also had to re-do my switch panel because the one I had did not have enough room for the holes that the throttle and mixture controls go through.  I decided to try out a local company that did a presentation at one of our EAA chapter meetings.  They have some software that you can use to design any panel and then order it directly.  They will mill it to specification and even fill in any engraving you have.  I'm excited about getting that next week...hopefully early next week so I can finish up the cockpit.

Its a little hard to see unless you click on the picture to go full size but this is the new switch panel design that I sent to Front Panel Express.  I can't wait to get the final product.
OK, on to the pictures...

After lots of work on the induction system I think I am going to call it good.  I have a little work on the alternate air portion but otherwise it is ready.  This is a shot of the inlet with a nice gap.

And here is the clearance from the lower cowl.

Taking a page out of Jeff's book I decided to put small windows in the inspection covers for the elevator push-rod ends.  This is a picture of the inside with the new windows installed.

And this is a picture of the inspection cover installed.  I think it is going to work nicely!

I finally got a chance to set up my "paint booth" to prime the baffle parts.  I ended up cutting the paint booth down a bit so I could easily put it away and take it out when I needed it.

I also took the time to "glue" the finger pull to the top of the slider canopy.  This should help with the opening of the canopy when its fully closed.

Finally I spent Sunday doing nut-plates on the wings since I have to wait for the switch panel to get finished before I move forward on the fuselage.  Yes, all day (except for the time I took off to watch the Seahawks game).  There were 78 nut-plates installed today.  That doesn't sound like much but stop to consider how much work that is...I had to match drill three holes per nut-plate, debur and dimple those 234 holes, and then rivet the nut-plates to the wing.  Oh and since I was working blind I ended up missing one end of the nut-plate on 4 holes that meant I had to drill out the rivets and try again.


These are the wing root fairing nut plates. 30 nut plates and about 18 more on the fuel tanks yet to do.

One of the six lower wing access plates.  Can you see the boo boo in this picture?  I caught it after I took the picture.

Test fitting the cover plates.

And one of the access plates finished including the screws.