Phew, decided to spend a few more minutes in the garage. That turned into refusing to stop until I completed the assembly. Progress is fun.
Drive Horn 0:15
I just received my Amazon order for a digital protractor. After receiving it, the instructions listed the read out granularity was 0.1 while the accuracy was only 0.3 deg. Great, I guess you get what you pay for. In the end I doubt 0.3 deg will amount to much other than an imperceptible amount of clearance. Either way, I checked the measurements against a mechanical protractor and .2 deg is just guess work at that point. Completed bending the horn by pressing it into a piece of ash wood I cut to 8deg on my bandsaw. Then testing and adjusting with my digital protractor.
Drive Horn 2:00
Well I got started building the plane again, after several years and three moves. What better place to start than rebuilding the rudder. I was not happy with how the first one came out. So, build it again I will. Step one create a new drive horn. I still have to drill holes and what not. But it was fun to make some progress no matter how small.
Getting Started After A Long Break
After years of not working on this project, and three moves, I decided to buckle down and attempt to make some progress. One of the issues I had in the past was that I was not happy with how the rudder came out. So that will be the first thing I work on. I placed my order for more materials and the complete hardware kit to build the air frame. I’m looking forward to getting building again.
Fiberglass Tail Tips 4:00
I spent 4 hours finishing up the fiberglass work for the tail tips and installing them. Not a lot to talk about. I spent a lot of time considering the rudder. After discussing the off set the rudder has with my EAA chapter and Sonex tech support, I’m going to go ahead and rebuild the rudder. Not a lot of work now, but after paint it would be a real pain.
Tail Tip 1:00
I spent one hour measuring and drilling the fiber glass on the horizontal tail tip. One down two to go.
Elevator 5:30
I spent Saturday building the elevator. I’m actually pretty happy that I got this done in one day.
Elevator 0:30
While I was at Oshkosh this year, I spent lot of time inspecting the tail section of Sonex aircraft. I know there is a joke here, somewhere. Well, the thing I noticed the most was that several of them had a slight twist in the elevator. Some worse than others. While they were all flying just fine, I’d still like to try and avoid this. So today I upgraded my workbench to make it as flat as I could get it. I snugged down the 2x6s as good as I could, then added a thick slab of MDF. Flatter than plywood and easily replaceable.
I then laid out the parts to start the Elevator and spent some time reading the plans. Sometimes I wish the plans included best practices/techniques for building a particular part.
Horizontal Stabilizer 1:30
I had some help in the garage tonight. Jes harnessed her inner Rosie.
After putting in her first few rivets, Jes said, that was easy. I want to make some art out of Aluminum. I don’t think she has checked out my log. This part already has about 20 hours in it. On the other hand, it’s finally done, for now…
Horizontal Stabilizer 1:45
One step back to go two steps forward. I took the skins and hinges back off of the Stabilizer and deburred everything. After that, I reassembled and I’m ready for rivets.
