1148 Days 1924 Hours

I can't beleive it has been over a month. we were out of the state for about 2 and half weeks and with Christmas and New Years it has been difficult to get back out to the garage. Well last night (after cleaning up a lot) I started looking at where I was at. I measured the bottom side of the forward fuselage and it was 2 inches short! How can that be? I cannot believe that I made that big of a mistake. I am going to have to do it over. Arghhh. What happened? I have no idea. All I can do is keep moving forward.

BTW I got x-plane and a flight sim yoke for Christmas. I hope they motivate me to get out to the garage more and not keep me from working on the plane.

1192 Days 1925 Hours

We are back from Thanksgiving. I spent about 2 hours cleaning the garage. Then it was late so I just thought I would spend a little time cutting out these negative forms so that I can form the leading edge of the Horizontal. It certainly would have been a lot easier if I would have done it with the foam instead of trying to fix it after the fiberglass is laid down. I don't know how the others are moving forward. Do they have secret directions? I also wish I would have understood that peel ply on seems is what the directions were asking for instead of the big long sheets of fabric that I have been using. I have a terrible sharp edge on the Horizontal that I am going to have to micro over.

1200 Days 1928 Hours

Again no picture while Kim has the camera in CA. Last night I cut out the sides and bottom of the forward fuselage. I cut close to the line and then sanded the rest of the way. When I cut off the extra I tried to test the strength of what I had done. I easily broke the pieces and could see that the weakest link was the attachment of the fiberglass to the foam board. It makes me wonder how strong this stuff is or how strong it should be.

I also spent some time fixing the blue foam into the vertical. I knew that I needed some for the leading edge so I laid out the vertical on some cardboard and traced what I needed. I then could place the cardboard on the foam board to minimize the use. I spent some time fitting and sanding it into place. That was probably not that necessary since I will take it out and install the antenna and cable before fixing it in place. I am leaving for Ca for the rest of the week so I will probably end up with fewer than 40 hours for the month. I want to ramp up and start putting in 60 per month. I don't know if that is possible. Kim has been so good to me. She knows how much I hate work and she encourages me to work on the plane. I feel a little guilty because I don't want to hate work to get permission to work on the plane. It is a complicated.psychological trick.

1202 days 1931 Hours

No picture today. Kim took the camera to CA. I was gone all week on a business trip to North Carolina. Originally the plan was that Kim would leave for CA (Thanksgiving Holiday) on Friday after the kids got out of school before I even got home from NC. Well she decided to wait until Saturday. I couldn't very well come home after being gone for a week and ditch them all to go work in the garage. I didn't even think about looking in the garage until she was gone.

They all left about 1:30PM. I then set out to work in the garage. But first I wanted to load some podcasts on the ipod so I could listen while I worked. After 2 trips to the Apple store I finally figured out that I needed to order and new cable for our old ipod. I found a source online where I could get it for $3. The Apple store wanted $30. The original ipod only cost us $50. Next thing I know it is 6:30 and I had promised that I would go to the temple. I got home from the temple and started working about 10:00. 3 Hours later I had finished the inside of the forward fuselage bottom. I am sure I could have done a better job. It seemed to take a lot more glue than normal. And my overlaps were too frequent. It is supposed to be the inside which could be cover with carpet or some other covering. Once again I am questioning everything that I do, but I keep moving forward. I did find that I could load podcasts on a CD and listen to them. I listened to 2 CDs and threw them away. 5 cents a CD is pretty cheap. I would have to waste 1,000 CDs before I could have paid for an ipod. That is about 3 years of CDs which by then the ipod would be outdated or too old to work any more. It just seems like a waste of CDs I am not throwing anything away when I use the ipod.

I read online about using Mazda engines for airplanes. I am going to stick to the plans and not deviate at all. That is the advice Boyd gave me. He also told me to build a different plane. I also saw the latest version of kitplanes which had a list of home builts. There was one that had enough room for 10 people. A home built. I will be lucky to finish this one. No time to start planning the next one.

1209 days 1934 hours

I pulled the peel ply off of the channel ribs and it was so smooth inside, which is a good thing since a cable will be in there.



Here I am working on the bottom of the forward fuselage. I am sanding the joggles. I know it is important to have a radius at the edge because the cloth does not do right angles. I was really quick at this compared to the first time. This whole fuselage took me an hour. Notice I hung the vertical frame up on the horizontal.





Here I am laying down another section of the second layer of fiberglass. I am getting a lot more comfortable with cutting on the bias. I think I realize that Scott was only applying peel ply to the overlap of the layers. I put peel ply over the whole thing. This layup took a lot more time because I spent a lot of time working on the radius at the edge. I didn't like how the job turned out. I especially unhappy with the bump that is apparent from the joining of the 6" to foam board. I could have done a better job putting those together or a better job smoothing it out before I laid down the cloth. My total time for today was 5 hours. Just to do this one section. I am out of town all of next week so this will be it for awhile.

1211 days 1939 hours

I came home at lunch again and first tacked in the one side of the channel rib with 5 min epoxy and then locked it down with two layers of Bidirectional Fiberglass. Look how bad the fit was. That gap at the top is not good. I am hoping I can make it up when I glass the whole wing. I also made a mistake in thinking that locking down one side of the channel and then the other would be better. Well it turns out that after all those layers of fiberglass the other side sits on top of those layers and is actually higher than this side.

I am glad that I am finding a use for all that extra fiberglass I had laying around because of cutting on the bias.

I this next picture you can see I used the light and finished locking down the other side. It took a lot longer because it was a pretty tight squeeze and I was trying to be careful. I am understanding that the radius on the corner with the slurry helps lay down the fiberglass. The fiberglass really can't do corners. I will remember that as I sand out the joggles. I will make sure I either radius the corners with micro or I will sand a radius into the joggle.

1214 Days 1942 Hours

I had to wait for the glue to cure on the vertical so I moved on to the bottom of the fuselage. All I did was mark the 10 points and connect them. I had previously attached 6" to the sheet of 23" x 92". I will sand the joggles and cover later. I was much quicker this time around.







I started attaching the channel ribs. I had even tacked in one side with some 5 minute epoxy then I remembered that I hadn't drilled the holes and then I remembered that I hadn't added the two layers of bid for the pully. So I tore it off and layed up the two layers where the pully will go. I know that peel ply is not neccessary, but this is the inside of the channel where a cable will run and I like the smooth surface it creates.

I am still struggling with my fit especially the bottom channel rib cap. I am hoping that I can make adjustments later if I need to.