Author Archives: pclifton

So I took a few days off the project after finishing the rudder, but jumped right back into things today.  Time for the elevators!  This starts pretty much like the rudder did: first step is to cut and prepare a … Continue reading →

Whew!  Another piece of the puzzle together…when I got out to the garage tonight, the first order of business was squeezing all the skin rivets.  This went pretty fast, even though I had to drill out one rivet when I … Continue reading →

Shorter night in the garage than I figured for tonight.  Had some things to do around the house and didn’t get out there until about 8:00.  Then it didn’t take long before my sore back made me decide to go … Continue reading →

Ordered the blind rivets I need to continue with the rudder from Spruce today, so they’ll be here tomorrow.  Tonight I wanted to put together my rig to use when I get around to bending the leading edge of the … Continue reading →

I did not, in fact, get the rudder completely riveted today.  I’m starting to think that it might be fun to keep track of every time I say “I’m pretty sure I can get XYZ done tomorrow evening” and I … Continue reading →

No priming today.  My paint booth (aka driveway) was intermittently rained out.  So instead I just cleaned and prepped all the skeleton pieces.  This way tomorrow I can go straight into priming and see where things go from there.

Kudos to Van’s for timing.  The day after I finished the vertical stab, a package showed up at my front door containing the replacement parts for the rudder.  I celebrated by waiting an additional another day before getting back to … Continue reading →

And yes, I really did finish it up after midnight.  More on that later… All I had left to do today was to squeeze all the skin rivets around the perimeter of the stab, then use a combination of solid … Continue reading →

Let’s get the bad news out of the way of the bat: you astute observers may have noticed that yes, I’ve switched components again and it’s back to the v-stab.  The short story is that in an extended moment of … Continue reading →

Yup, last week went pretty much as I expected at work.  Not much time for working in the garage until today.  Anyways, today’s first order of business was to fabricate a couple parts.  The plans call for R-716 and -717, … Continue reading →