Sunday, March 2, 2014

Center Console

The past week seems to have flashed by!  Seems like I haven't made a ton of progress on the plane but I guess when I look back over the week I have made a move in the right direction.  One of the tasks that I did make significant progress on but did not take any pictures was the empenage fairing.  That's the fairing that goes around the vertical Stabilizer, horizontal stabilizer, and the tail cone of the fuselage.  I will try to get some pics to post another time. (edit- Ok, I added a picture to the end of the post)

However, I spent pretty much the whole weekend working on the center console and I have to say I am both impressed with the kit and utterly disappointed.  The design of the console is really very nice, but the quality of the kit is not so good.  The material used does not seem to be quality aluminum, in fact if there such as thing as "pot" metal aluminum then this would be it.  The kit was laser cut and most of the cuts are dead on accurate, but a couple of times now I have found where the cutting was done wrong.  I posted one picture below of an example of the errors.  I ended up re-making the parts that were wrong so its not a big deal but it did take a lot more time than it should have.


The part of the left is the one that was cut incorrectly.  The two small holes on the bottom should have been on the other flange like the one I made on the right..

The is the center console as I was doing the hours of work required to get it to the state you see it in the next couple of pictures.  In this picture I have just finished putting the storage compartment pieces in.

And, here it is sitting between the seats.  Its not bolted down yet but it seems like it is going to fit.

Here it is from the back, a bit hard to see.  That will change once I get the instrument panel back in.  I will have to prime it I believe.
This is the empenage fairing.  Its not finished but it at least sits properly now.