Wings Ordered!

Sent in the order last week. Ship date September 16. That works out to 8-9 weeks from mailing the order to delivery.
Ordered fiberglass materials from Aircraft Spruce, based on notes in Jim Andrew's build log.

Got all of the tips fitted to the empennage and pre-drilled with #40. All except the rudder base. I'll wait till final assembly on that.

Started gluing aluminium strips to the HS tips for reinforcement. Cut two half inch strips from the scrap pieces and then my bandsaw blade broke. Sanded and scotchbrited those two strips and then mixed up some epoxy. Got one HS tip glued up. After the glue sets on all of the parts, I'll fit them back on and then final drill to #30. Then I'll dimple and countersink. That'll take a couple of more weeks.

After that then I'll start planning electrical systems until it's time to build a wing jig.

Haven't been tracking time very well. Spent 5-6 hours so far on the fiberglass.

Empennage Complete

Well, not really. I'll start on the fiberglass work. And there's a bunch of miscellaneous stuff that has to be done. But based on what I saw yesterday when visiting Scott Card, the elevators are now in the right place. Gave all four of the eyebolts a full turn in, and now the jam nuts can be torqued down. I'll wait on the torquing until torque seal arrives.

Measuring the travel on the elevators shows 34 up, 24 down on the right, 33 up, 27 down on the left. More than what the narrative specifies, but I didn't want to go any farther forward to keep the horn from interfering with the HS tip fiberglass. The very small gap between horn and tip has implications for icing safety. (My strategy for dealing with icing: don't fly if it's even a remote possiblity.)





Here's the status picture that will be posted to the VAF forums.

It's an empennage!

Visiting hours

Packed the empennage into the minivan and drove up to GTU to visit Scott Card. After that,
drove down to Round Rock to meet with Deene Ogden, Tech Counselor, EAA chapter #187.

Driving up to Scott's hanger, two RV's taxied up. I had seen them in the pattern. Turns out they were going the same place I was. They were Stu McCurdy and Bill Gunn. I'd been wanting to talk to Bill. If you go all the way back to my first posts, I mention a red RV-4 as the inspiration for my project. I mentioned the award that Van's offers and I intend to do what I can to see that he gets it. I also saw the red RV-4 leaving Lakeway the next morning from my back yard.

Somewhere in the past three weeks of no posts I cut the trim tab hinge pin to length and bent it for the safety wiring shown on the drawing. I bent it perfectly on the first try - except backwards. Crap. I managed to get it bent in the right direction but it's not perfect any more. The plans say another one comes with the fuselage. Maybe I'll try again. I claimed an hour for that.