Delivery and Workshop
Move of airplane from basement to hangar.
Total build time: 1086 Hours. This post marks a milestone in the build… successfully moving the aircraft from my basement to its new home in a hangar in Rockwood, TN. Airport identifier is KRKW. Back in December 2013 I made a post on this blog about my future plans to remove a relatively completed fuselage … Continue reading
Time-lapse Video, 900 hours of work and move to airport.
This video includes all the time-lapse footage I have from January 2014 until August 2015. It’s essentially the entire build of the airframe. It’s missing the first 200 hours of the project because I didn’t have the camera setup for that portion of the build.
French Door
Mom and Bill were in town again, the first they’d been back since that first week I started the airplane in November 2013. Once again, they helped me make big improvements on my workshop! This time, the main focus was the all-important french door that will allow me to actually get the plane OUT of … Continue reading
730 Hour Project Update (Timelapse Video)
It’s now been 11 months since I took delivery of my Waiex kit last November. I took off 3 months of building during the summer, so I essentially have spent 8 months of actual building time on the project. I previously made an update at 500 hours and included a time-lapse video that showed the … Continue reading
Aft Fuselage #8 (Aluminum material recall/repair)
Repair work: 20 hours. The front and aft fuselages are joined on 4 corners at the longerons by splice plates… 3 of these 4 pairs splice plates were included in the material recall and had to be replaced. 1 pair in particular, the upper horizontal splice plates, would require a LOT of work to be … Continue reading
Empennage #8 (Aluminum material recall/repair)
Repair work: 7 hours. On January 9, 2014 I was notified of some bad parts that were included in a very small batch of Sonex kits that were shipped in the fall of 2013 (affected owners were individually notified)… unfortunately I was included in this recall. It included several parts in the empennage and aft … Continue reading
500-hour project update (Videos)
My wings, aft fuselage and empennage are as complete as they can be until the whole aircraft comes together and rigging takes place. I decided this would be a good time to stop and look back at my progress so far. To do so I made several videos. These first 2 short videos I made … Continue reading
Wing Storage Rack
Being almost done with my left wing, I started looking into options to store it that would take up minimal space in my workshop. I am glad that I decided to build the wings before moving on to the forward fuselage, as working on the wings has taken up most of the available room in … Continue reading
December time-lapse video
I created a time-lapse video of my workshop using pictures I’ve taken during the build, from 2 perspectives. I have 2 tripods setup in fixed positions to give myself a stable platform to duplicate my shots, but there’s still a bit of wiggle, I’ve done my best to smooth it out. The video basically has … Continue reading
Aircraft in a basement
In the interest of planning and demonstration, I made some graph paper cutouts to experiment with different ways to fit my aircraft inside my basement, as well as some planning to get it out of my basement when I’m ready. The plane will get quite big pretty quickly. Here’s how I initially thought I would … Continue reading
What is a rivet? (Pop rivets)
A rivet is probably a term that most everyone has heard, but not everyone has seen in action. A simple way to think of a rivet is as a permanent bolt. You put it through a hole like a bolt, and once tightened (squeezed or hammered) it holds in place with heads on both sides … Continue reading
What is a cleco?
I use the word cleco a lot, usually in the context of “wow look at all those clecoes!” or “such and such cleco”. A cleco is a temporary sheet metal fastener. It has a small strong spring inside that, when compressed, will cause the tip of the cleco to simultaneously elongate in length and shrink … Continue reading
Workshop improvements.
While Mom and Bill were in town for Thanksgiving, they helped me a ton by making improvements to my workshop, including some much needed lighting. Lighting: Before and After: Also installed was a toilet and a shop sink. Both are much appreciated and used often!
Unpacking.
Here are some pictures of what was inside some of the boxes: The motor mount and various other welded components. 10,000 pop rivets. 100 pages of 2ft x 4ft cad drawing blueprints, aluminum angle and channel material, and much more. Here is a picture from the Sonex website illustrating what … Continue reading
My Workshop
My home has a large, full-sized unfinished basement. The central room of this basement will be my workshop, and I can use adjacent rooms for storage. There is walkout doorway to my back yard that currently has a swinging door and a glass door panel. This doorway will eventually be converted into a french door … Continue reading