Jul 27 -- Just Like Kindergarten

The rules are the same as kindergarten: when you're done, pick up after yourself. Those dudes that build a plane during their lunch hour in 10 weeks never seem to account for this time. I spent just over an hour hanging up the vertical stabilizer (had to move a ton of "stuff"), and cleaning off the work tables.

Carpeted tables are nice and scratch free -- until little bits of aluminum get embedded in the carpet. I tried using a vacuum from the shop; take my advice and steal the family upright when you are not being watched. It was actually meant to clean junk out of carpet.

Still in pain with this pinched nerve, so that's all for tonight.

Time: 1 hour

Jun 19-20 Shop Work and Vertical Stabilizer

Not a heck of lot of airplane work this weekend. Was the perfect weather to work inside on a plane (low 50s and rain); however had to put out a fire with the bumper sticker site related to address verification. Seems that the Web Service vendor is turning off the old version in 30 days, so I had to code up an update for the new version of the service. Most likely their initial warning about this change wound up in my junk mail filter. The hard part isn't rewriting this -- it's figuring out the code that someone else wrote the first time.

Saturday I spent mega $$ to purchase an industrial-grade air filter for the compressor, and to st up two lines: one for high-pressure air at 100 PSI that the rivet squeezer will use, and another set to 40 PSI or so for the rivet gun. With two lines there is no need to change pressure settings all the time.

Following the instructions provided with the unit, I located it 25 feet downstream from the compressor. Physically the filter and compressor are next to each other -- I simply used a 25 ft coil of hose, hung on the wall, to provide the distance. This is required to allow the air to cool enough that moisture condenses before reaching the filter.

Note the photo below. This was screwed to the wall, which I previously covered with 3/4" plywood as part of the garage remodel in prep for building the plane. You can also see that I marked out "don't drill here" zones to make this worry free. Hmmm, I should become a consultant and charge BP big bucks by selling them a map of the Gulf of Mexico -- all hatched out with a marker...

Which brings us to the galvanized pipe. That vertical run has a fitting at the top for the hose, with a quick-connect fitting. Then there is a 12 inch run with a ballcock at the bottom, intended to act as a drain to keep water out of the filter. There is also a drain on the bottom of the filter. However when it comes to painting I'll still need a desiccant cartridge in the hose ahead of the paint gun.

One final thought about this setup. Do your homework before hunting down the parts. Went to two different commercial shops (one being an auto paint supplier) and the help in each was absolutely worthless. They didn't even know what the filter did! I am done supporting local businesses -- they can't even claim value added in the form of knowledgeable help.

Very little actual aircraft construction: all I did was de-burr and flute the ribs for the vertical stabilizer. You can see the fluting pliers in the second photo. The idea is to correct bend induced in the ribs when the edges were turned up. Not going to re-tell the entire story about fluting here; however it's fun to watch the rib straighten back out and lose the bow that was there before this operation.

Total time: 5 hours, with 0.5 hours on the plane per-se.

March 21 - Finish Table, Air Compressor Drain

Actually most of the day was spent doing taxes -- takes an average of 3-4 weekends each year to complete them, due to complexity.

Two RV-related projects today. The first was finishing another worktable, per yesterday's blog post. The table is in the spirit of EAA chapter 1000's drawings, with two significant deviations. First, I used 2x3 lumber instead of 2x4. A bunch lighter, and still sturdy. Second, I have so much lumber in the garage that I scavenged from that supply rather than use new lumber (with the exception of most of the 2x3 pieces). But this is getting frustrating -- no matter how hard I hit the wood supply in the garage, there is still too much left! The newest table is the one farthest from the camera in the photo.

Second, I went to Home Depot to pick up come galvanized pipe and make the air compressor tank easier to drain. The built-in drain required getting down on my knees at the end of each session, so I added an easy-to-reach ballcock valve. Saw that a number of people on Van's Air Force made this same modification. The result rests on the floor, so I need to think about whether or not to elevate the compressor in order to avoid stress fractures caused by the galvanized pipe contacting the floor while the compressor is running (and in turn causing a lot of vibration).

These are both important additions to the shop -- even though neither was directly responsible for forward progress on the project.

March 20 -- New Table

Started out the day by laying out lines to drill the HS-908 brackets, then went to the airport for some Luscombe fun.

The airport outing began with 90 minutes of polishing under the LH stabilizer and elevator. Yuk, nasty and right above my face -- but there was a lot of surface corrosion, so this was important.

Then off to Pt. Townsend for lunch, or more correctly apple pie and a milkshake. Miserable day for flying -- 1000 FPM down in spots and rotor in others. And this was over the Sound!

Back at home, I started building a second table because the horizontal stabilizer needs a longer table to build on. (More correctly, I need two tables end-to-end in order to hold the parts. Got 75% of the way thru the table.

5 Hours (1 on HS-908, 4 on table)