Standing on my head and back drilling these with a right angle attachment was not my favorite at all.
Gear Channel Doublers
Rear wing gussets
These A6 rivets are huge.
Also very happy for gear strut fittings that fit 🙂
Gear strut fittings are back
Got new fittings from Zenith and they look much better.
Sad that I have to paint them.
Also started drilling and riveting the rear wing attach points, which I had held back on earlier in the build.
Right wing started
Flipped a coin and the right wing goes first. Got all of the ribs in the right place and the left ones marked and put away.
Next step is to pull these off, drill to 30, then 20, debur and cortec.
Wing build “table”
I decided based on the amount of room I have to use the shipping crate as a table to build the wings and storage underneith (more on that later).
It’s VERY heavy and I wanted to be able to move it around and out of the garage by myself. $20 in 4 inch castors from Harbor Frieght and I can now move this 250 pound box with one hand.
Uncrating
I’m REALLY tight on space to get everything in my 20’x20′ garage. The only thing left in the crate now is the wing skins and spars.
Designing a sling for those now and then on to building some wings!
Also had a little but of a scare with the windshield. Looked like it had a big scratch in it. Julie and I pulled some of the protective film up and it turns out it’s just a scratch in the film. Phew.
Drilling and deburring
Today was drilling and deburring the forward fuselage and doublers.
Not very picture worthy, but I took some anyway.
Some unboxing
Started unboxing and sorting parts from the rest of my kit which was delivered last week.
The Gear Fittings don’t fit
After some back and forth with Zenith on this issue, it turns out that the gear strut fittings I received are missing a bend on the back side of both of them. As a result they don’t meet the fuselage correctly and need to be replaced.
These are supposed to have a 14 degree bend in the aft end of them and mine have almost none.
Just to be sure, I measured the angle on the plane and it’s awefully close to 14 degrees just like it’s supposed to be.
So those two steel parts are taking a trip back to the factory. If they need to replaced, meaning they can’t bend them, that’ll be a shame because I had them both powder coated and that isn’t cheap around here.
The “build log” before this site
Up until now I was using a paper log and taking pictures. I decided a blog was a much better way. Maybe I’ll copy those logs here, maybe not.
Here are a couple YouTube videos from earlier in the project: