| November 1-5 |
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Not a lot to report right now. I've bent up
one more center rib (whoopie). Most of my time was spent
between Dr. appointments for my knee and going riding in PA for the weekend. We
went down on Thursday night and camped out until Sunday morning. Got lots
of riding in with no injuries to report.
Sunday was my wife's Birthday. So once I got home the rest of the
evening was spent with her. I will be back at the build tonight for
certain. |
| November 6-7 |
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Minor progress to report. I finished bending
the flange on the 8 center ribs. This morning I hammered the flanges to 90
degrees and started working with the fluting pliers to flatten them
out.
I'm almost ready to purchase my torch and some of my riveting tools.
I'm pretty much decided that I'll be getting the meco midget torch kit from Kent
White. The rivet gun and accessories I'm not so sure on.
As an aside, the RI local EAA Chapter 1363 held it's annual elections last
night. I was voted in as VP. Don't tell anyone, but I haven't a clue
what I'm doing :) I'm sure I'll figure it out. And when I can't
figure it out there are plenty of people in our chapter who will be able to
point me in the right direction.
If someone had told me a year ago that I would be building my own airplane,
and become one of the leaders of this chapter I would have laughed at
them. Funny how life happens isn't it? |
| November 8-9 |
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I finished fluting and seaming the 8 .032 center
ribs. Once that was done, I started cutting the lightening holes. I
managed to cut 16 holes by the time I headed off to work this morning.
Tonight I'm going to try to finish these up.
If I finish the center ribs, I'll start in on the short center ribs.
After that I'm going to start bending the flap ribs.
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| November 10-13 |
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If you've been following along you know that
September and October weren't exactly my best months. This weekend I
finally started rectifying some of those errors. |
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The first major mistake was miss-drilling all of the
lightening hole pilot holes in the flaps and the aileron blanks. Yes, All
of them.
I didn't look close enough to realize that there were indeed different
placements for the holes depending on which piece you were working on. It
wasn't one of my finer moments. *shrug* what cha gonna do?
Once I had decided on my plan of action, I made up new form blocks for both
the flap and the aileron ribs. This time I made the pilot holes in the
proper spot.
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The flaps can be salvaged. The correct placement of the holes aren't
that dissimilar from the wrong ones. Once I cut the actual lightening hole
the miss-cut holes will disappear.
Alas, the aileron won't be as simple. I will be remaking all of
them. If you look closely at the larger image you can see a pencil
outline showing where the lightening holes would be. There is just no way to work around the error.
Thankfully they are among the smallest ribs made so the damage to my wallet
should be minimal.
Here are comparisons between the
good hole placement and the poor. You can see that I should be OK with the
flap ribs but the aileron are waste. |
|
I can still use much of the aluminum from the aileron ribs. I will cut
1 inch strips from the bad blanks and make stiffener angles from
them. In the end there won't be too much wasted metal. I hope. |
 |
I also finished shaping the .032 center ribs this weekend.
All in all it was a good weekend. |
| November 14 |
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I started resizing the flap blanks.
Unfortunately my router bit had other ideas and went tits-up. I'll get a
new bit today and finish up the job. Once done with that I can remake the
aileron ribs. |
| November 15 |
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|
I finished cutting the flap blanks to their proper
size. I also redrilled the pilot holes.
After looking at it a bit, I think I will make a form block with the
lightening holes routed into it. |
| November 16-19 |
|
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I made "decent" progress this
weekend. I had my brothers children for the weekend so they got the lion's
share of my time. One of them, Justin, helped out with forming some of the
flap ribs. With his help we were able to hammer all of the flanges on the
flap ribs this weekend.
I also spent some time making a routing template to help cut uniform
lightening holes in the ribs. I'm hoping that this week I'll be able to
finish up the flap ribs and start back in on the ailerons.
|
| November 20-26 |
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Between the Thanksgiving holiday and me and the Mrs. taking a weekend trip up
into New Hampshire, I had some trouble finding the shop.
I did find it though and I'm happy to report that as of last night the flap
ribs are done.
The router template I made worked very well. I had one set back where I cut
into the template with the router and had to repair the template with some
epoxy. One night was lost to that. The routing of the lightening
holes went much better than using the circle cutter. I shot a video of the
process. I'll try to get that up sometime soon. |
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Here's the routing video as promised. 1.8meg |
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Here's the bobstick II. The lightening hole
flanges for the back ribs, the aileron and flap ribs call for 1/4 inch
lightening holes. I had the spare Delrin, so instead of cutting the
original Delrin bobstick and recutting the slot, I just made a new one.
Simple and effective.
As of last night my rib count stands at 150. 20 left to form. I'll
start in on the aileron ribs tonight. |
| November 27 |
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I spent some time cleaning up the flap ribs and
flanging & pushing the back rib lightening holes.
Then I moved on to the aileron ribs. I had already remade the aileron
rib template so I took some time and re-measured all of my hole
placements. They appear to be correct. I called it a night at
9:00. |
| November 28-29 |
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more work on the template. Once I was
satisfied I had it correct I started to make one rib to see how well I
did. I got as far as drilling and routing the blank. Tonight I will
probably bend up the test piece. If that goes well, then I'll have at the
real thing. |
| November 30 |
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I made my test aileron from one of the miss-drilled
pieces. After bending I measured it all up and Whaddaya know. . . it was
right.
With that done I pulled out a half sheet of .025 and started cutting
blanks. By the end of the night I had cut all the blanks and drilled the
pilot/jig holes. I also had enough time to route half of the aileron
ribs.
With that, November comes to a close. |
| back, next |
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