I will have to start out by making some corrections to my November post. First of all, the Florida trip was not our final trip in 2016. We decided to go to Indianapolis again for Christmas Day, followed by a visit to Fort Wayne the following day. Another great trip, to be sure... and a great way to cap off a truly wonderful year of travel.
Also, it turns out that I'm still waiting on my quickbuild kits. I did manage to make shipping arrangements with Tony Partain of Partain Trading Company; they specialize in hauling Van's quickbuild kits, as well as airframes for other manufacturers. I didn't expect to be able to utilize Tony's services, but apparently his operation is much larger than I anticipated. After checking with Van's Aircraft, he said he'd have no trouble getting my kits into his January delivery schedule. That was the good news. The bad news came when I followed up with my own call to Van's Aircraft to confirm my shipping arrangements. I learned that apparently my wings and fuselage would not be part of the same shipment from the Philippines. There was some initial confusion, but the way I understand it at this point is that the fuselage would be shipped after the wings. I know one of them is on the water now... but I'm still not sure whether the wings have already arrived and the fuselage is enroute, or that the wings are enroute and the fuselage will ship in January. As of today, I have received no further word... so I can only hope that both shipments make it to Van's in time to allow for an inspection and shipping by Partain Trading Company during their January schedule. I guess I'll find out next month.
In the meantime, I made some decisions and placed my paint order with Blend Supply. I found out that I would be able to order my custom Skyscapes GA colors in smaller quart batches, and the other relative quantities of material would be unchanged, so I made a leap of faith and placed my paint order. At first it looked like my delivery would arrive before our trip, but it was delayed by a holiday closure of our local FedEx depot. The revised delivery day and time ended up working out well for us; we got back from our road trip in time to accept the shipment. I was surprised at how small the shipment looked on the pallet, considering the expense... but it was all there, except for one back-ordered gallon of primer reducer that I knew about in advance. I went ahead and got some additional shelving and a dedicated mixing table from Home Depot for the painting supples, and set it all up in the shop.
Now at least I have the material to do the training projects I have planned. I'm hoping I can manage it during the winter... but I'll have to see how that works out.
I had brought the tail feathers back into the main shop when I realized it might be awhile before the big parts got here; I figured I might as well start some of the fiberglass work on the empennage while I was waiting. Although I have had some training on fiberglass work, I was still intimidated by the thought of just jumping into the process with so little practical experience. I decided to make up my own practice piece, based on my Synergy Air training project but with some differences... I literally wanted to throw myself some curves. So I made up a jig from wood scraps, bought some cheap plexiglass, grabbed some of my practice aluminum sheet and made up a miniature cowling and windshield.
I did a lot of research into shaping plexiglass, but didn't want to put our kitchen oven at risk. So I just bent the cut sheet into the jig and gradually heated it with a heat gun until it started to hold the curve. I was able to clamp and tape it into shape before using epoxy to glue it to the roughed up aluminum. It was a messy process; the glue was a very gooey consistency that was hard to work with, but I managed. I also learned why you don't try to run a bead on the inside... but that's what practice pieces are for. It set up well, and I cleaned it up a bit. I had to order the PVC pipe tape that I'll use for masking for this project and for my canopy glasswork. I also got some tooling that will make that work easier.
I started out by setting up the vertical stabilizer and rudder on the lower jig table, and began working on the top caps. I fabricated the back plug for the vertical stabilizer cap, and refined the fit of the top rudder cap. Since the prefab caps aren't exactly precision pieces, I had questions about how to achieve a better fit. My friend and fellow builder Leo came by and gave me some words of encouragement, and after drilling pilot holes and clecoing the pieces in place, I began to realize this would probably come together fairly well.
From there I shifted to the elevator tips. My strategy was to do the easy work first.
I decided to fit the rudder bottom next. This was a tricky piece to start. I had to do my own layout on the mounting holes, and since I want it to be removable, I had to order platenuts and screws for the aluminum mounting tab. It also involved cutting a notch on either side to fit around the rudder horns, and they are angled differently from the bottom of the fiberglass cap. To complicate things more, the bottom of the rudder is angled as well. I pondered many different ways of laying out these notches and chose to have the notches at a right angle to the open top edges, and calculated the angle required to fit around the horns. I did the cutting in stages, and when I was done, the fit was good... but I realized that to optimize the mounting, I should have had the notch run at a right angle to the crosscut, and angled in relation to the open top edge. Hopefully the pictures will do a better job of explaining this situation. I will probably rectify this with some patchwork and recutting. It shouldn't be a problem, and it's one key advantage to working with fiberglass: repair work is fairly easy.
I had to remove the elevators to begin the fitment of the horizontal stabilizer caps. These had a lot of excess material that needed to be cut off before initial fitting could begin. I knew early on that these would be a bit more difficult to fit because the curve of the premolded tips didn't match the curve of the leading edges of the horizontal stabilizer skins very closely. I decided to use my plug material to make a forming insert for each tip that would help shape the parts to nest in with the sheet metal more closely. Then I fabricated the end plugs for the tips.
So that wraps it up for 2016. It's been an absolutely great year... just as great as I hoped it would be. It is a bummer that the quickbuild kits aren't here yet, but they will be soon. Next year will be the Year in the Shop. The only trips I have planned are AirVenture (maybe) and picking up my engine in Tulsa. Full speed ahead... with careful care.
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