Another big milestone...almost

This has been a pretty exciting week for airplane building.  I began the process of moving to the airport.  Its only a partial milestone because the fuselage is still in the garage and I have a fair amount of work to do before it goes to the airport but at least I got the wings and a few other items moved.  The fuselage is not too far behind...maybe a couple of weeks.  Technically I could probably take it this week but I want to get the wheel fairings at least fitted before I move it and that should take me a few days.  Now, multiply my time estimate of a few days (3) by at least four (since I always seem to underestimate the time required to do anything with this darn airplane) and we have about 12 days of work before I can move it.

Here is the summary of work done this week...

This is a picture of the back side of the pilot side switch panel.  See the darker blue corner piece?  Well I have decided to replace it with one that matches the rest of the panel. I pulled that piece, measured it, and ordered one for this side and one for the co-pilot side.  Should arrive some time later this coming week.

Ok, what is this?  Well, its the wingtip as viewed on edge and this is the very aft end of it where there are a couple of ribs that get installed inside.  What I am showing here is the method I came up with to positively capture the hinge pins (with lock wire) that will hold the wingtips on.  The plans I used to do this work used a bolt that gets screwed into a nutplate using one of the holes in the rib.  I was not comfortable with that method because of the chance that the bolt could work itself out over time and potentially block the free swing of the ailerons.  Not being able to use my ailerons in flight could prove to be an unhealthy condition.

Here is the big wing move!  Mariah came over and helped me load the wings and Jeff stopped by the hangar to help me unload them.

The wings in their new temporary location.

This is the back half of the hangar and the blue blankets (near the orange tarp) hold the ailerons and the flaps.

And just for the heck of it I took this picture of the left side of the hangar.

Haven't we seen this picture before?  Well, not quite.  I finally got around to fitting the new throttle and mixture cable up to the fuel servo.  It looks pretty much the same but if you look at the longer white bracket you will see where I bent it slightly to give the cable a little more room below the sump.

I also installed this little guy today...you would think it would be a simple task consisting of three small bolts....well you would be wrong...as I was.  Getting my fingers into some of those really tight spots to put the nuts on the bolts turned out to be quite a task... one full of colorful words.

Still a work in progress but I got the heater hoses cut and installed as well as got started on the ignition blast tubes.  I am struggling with how to hold the blast tubes pointed at the base of the PMags which is why you see one hose just hanging there.  You will also notice in this picture that I have begun sealing gaps in the baffles.  On the left side of the picture you see a long bundle of wires;  well I decided that I needed a fuse closer to the battery for the battery buss.  That got installed today as well.