Author Archives: pclifton

Flap deburring, pushrod fixup

After giving myself a day to think about it, I decided to go ahead with the idea of filling the remaining rod ends with epoxy. The main thing that had kept me from doing this last night was worrying about … Continue reading

Posted in Flaps, Wings | Hours Logged: 2.5

Right aileron, pushrod fiasco

Did all the riveting on the right aileron today. It sure goes a lot faster the second time around… I did have a heart-stopping moment while riveting the top spar-skin rivets though. As before, I had the aileron standing up … Continue reading

Posted in Ailerons, Wings | Hours Logged: 6.5

Finished left aileron

And once again, not the most productive day. I had held out some slim hope of priming flap components today, but that was obviously not workable, given how much prep I still have to do on that stuff. So rather … Continue reading

Posted in Ailerons, Wings | Hours Logged: 3

Left aileron riveting

Well, that was a lot of fun. Assembling the ailerons starts off deceptively easily: you attach the nose ribs to the counterweight with blind rivets. Then the nose skin goes on, followed by the trailing edge skin, and this is … Continue reading

Posted in Ailerons, Wings | Hours Logged: 2.5

Right flap prep

Not a lot to report tonight. Mostly it was a replay of last night – match drilling the right flap top skin, then fitting and drilling the reinforcements for the inboard end. As I expected, it went quite a bit … Continue reading

Posted in Flaps, Wings | Hours Logged: 1.5

Left flap prep

Started out tonight by match drilling the left flap skin, which I’d clecoed in place before knocking off last night. To be really careful about avoiding putting a twist into the structure, I put 2×4 blocks under the flap so … Continue reading

Posted in Flaps, Wings | Hours Logged: 2

A little priming, a lot of flap work

So my first order of business for the day was to run to the nearest Napa and buy up their entire stock of 7220 self-etch primer. I should be set on that stuff for a while now, I think. Back … Continue reading

Posted in Flaps, Wings | Hours Logged: 6

Priming, tinkering with flaps

Didn’t get a lot done today. The main thing I wanted to get done was priming, but no sooner had I finished cleaning all the aileron parts when it started to drizzle. So I brought all the parts inside the … Continue reading

Posted in Ailerons, Wings | Hours Logged: 2.5

DImpling

So yeah, it’s been a few nights since I did anything. The main reason is that it’s been rather cold here, and I don’t have a heater for the garage, nor do I intend to get one. While it’d be … Continue reading

Posted in Ailerons, Wings | Hours Logged: 2

Deburring

Another day with not so much airplane stuff. I had another “little thing” to work on that I thought would take basically no time, so of course it actually took about three hours. The weather was good, but I pretty … Continue reading

Posted in Ailerons, Wings | Hours Logged: 2.5