Main Wings
Sept 2017 Update (Wings, Stabilators, Paint and more)
Total Build Time: 1245 Hours Here is the very short story of why I haven’t made a blog post in over a year and a half: I got married and had a daughter. In other words, life happened! However, I’m finally back at the project and rolling towards completion. I’ll be following up this post … 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.
Fuselage Completion #8 (Flight Control pre-rigging, VIDEO)
Total Build Time: 730 Hours. With my wings still attached, I decided to do as much as I could before removing them once again. Space in my basement is limited, so eventually I will need to remove the wings both to continue working, and to get the plane out of the basement at the end … Continue reading
Fuselage Completion #7 (Wing Rigging)
Total Build Time: 722 Hours. Finally, the big day has come. My wings have been sitting on a rack in the corner of my basement for the last 7 months. Now I will finally be able to pull them off the rack put them onto the plane for the first time. To prepare the fuselage … Continue reading
Fuselage Completion #4 (Rear spar carry-though assembly)
Total Build Time: 691 Hours. I pulled out some of the last remaining aluminum laser-cut parts from my aircraft kit that arrived last November. It was nice to be working with aluminum again after having done so much work recently with steel and titanium. Once I had these parts on my workbench I realized how … 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
Wings #19 (Right wing completion)
Total build time: 493 hours. Finally, time to skin the right wing! The same method as the left wing was used, and there were no surprises. Again I ran conduit for wingtip lighting wires if I so desired, as well as the pitot/static lines. Then on goes the leading edge skin. … Continue reading
Wings #16 (Pitot tube)
Total build time: 465 hours. The plans call for the fabrication of the pitot tube, or to buy a pre-made tube from Aircraft Spruce. I used the pre-made tube. It combines pitot and static sensors in the same assembly. The tubes were pretty close where the connections will be made, I used some shims … Continue reading
Wings #15 (Right wing skinning)
Total build time: 450 hours. The skinning of the right wing went much like the left with one small difference. My right wing spar had a slight bow in it, which is a common occurance for Sonex spars and the bow is generally taken out during the skinning process. When fitting the forward skin though … Continue reading
Wings #14 (Left Wing Completion)
Total build time: 438 hours. The wing skins are polished and just about ready to install. I have a few more details to take care of on the leading edge skin. First I dimpled the holes for flush rivets (using the Sonex super-simple-dimple-die), and then I completed the LRI installation. Then I started … Continue reading
Wings #10 (LRI – Lift Reserve Indicator)
Total build time: 381 hours. All of the left wing is now deburred and I’m ready to install my first significant customization to my plane. I decided to install a “Lift Reserve Indicator (LRI)” made by Kelly at Value Engineering. An LRI indicator is basically a poor pilot’s angle of attack indicator, and/or stall warning … Continue reading
Wings #9 (Left wing skinning – forward skin)
Total build time: 359 hours. The leading edge skins came packed in one of the 2 remaining unopened boxes in my shop. The leading edge bend was pre-formed by the factory. This skin takes multiple steps to position and drill. The first step is the easiest, done by draping the skin over … Continue reading
Wings #8 (Left wing skinning – aft skins)
Total build time: 350 hours. Before the skins can be positioned on the wing, the substructure must be made square and free of any twist. My initial method for doing this was to use 2 sawhorses. To hold the frame square, I used 2 pieces of wood bolted to the spars, and clamped them tight … Continue reading
Wings #7 (Left wing substructure completion)
Total Build Time: 342 hours. As with most things that have to be done twice, the second time around went smoother and I was able to make improvements on my technique. For starters, before aligning my root ribs I did a better job of squaring up the wing first, this made the fitting process a … Continue reading
Wings #6 (Right wing substructure completion)
Total Build time: 330 hours. After updrilling and deburring all of the ribs, I marked blue lines on the flanges to align them later with the wing skins. My method was to use a flat table and blue sharpie with a little bit of masking tape wrapped around to shim the point to the … Continue reading