Spent about an hour looking over the plans for the bungee system and comparing them
to the R version Shock Absorber system. Posted a few questions to the biplane forum.
Jan 2
1hr
Decided on the Standard bungee truss system using 1 1/8" x .065 tubing. For additional support I'll be rosset welding
tubing slid into the lower longerons from the firewall back to station 34.5. Drew up the pattern on the MDF. Just need to order the additional tubing.
January 3
1.5hrs
Needed to buy a few nuts and bolts. So... I needed to educate myself on them. Read the chapter in one of Tony B's books and
went online to read all about it. Ordered the hardware for the pedals and the additional tubing for the bungee truss.
January 5
.5hrs
Pulled the two tables (the ones from Gus) out of the garage, cleaned up and put a fresh coat of
white primer on them.
Jan 6
4hrs
Transferred fuselage side drawing onto table tops.
1.2hrs
Cut and drilled position blocks.
Jan 7
2.8hrs
Attached all positioning blocks to fuselage side layout and the bungee truss layout.
Jan 12
7hrs
Spent all day setting up and leveling the fuselage table.
Jan 13
2.3hrs
The hardware for the pedals arrived about a week ago. Decided to bolt the brake pedals to the rudder pedals and then set them aside. Found that the
one rudder pedal was a little out of square. Only way to fix that was to cut the weld just below the top horizontal tube. Cut and welded that back together. Trimmed down the width of
some of the horizontal tubes so that the tabs on the brake pedals would slide over them.
600 hours ! wooohoo !
Jan 14
2.5hrs
Cleaned up the weld area on the rudder pedal I cut and re-welded. Needed to square up some of the horizontal tubes that
I "trimmed" down. Cut two pieces of tubing for the bungee truss system.
Jan 16
1.7hrs
Let's just put tonight down as a tube notching practice session. Learned some stuff
so it wasn't all for not.
Jan 19
.4hrs
"Trying" to put the bolts on the pedals. No luck.
Jan 20
1.8hrs
Spent the morning finding out why the bolts wouldn't fit in the correctly sized hole
then spent approx. two hours re-drilling and beveling the edges of the "over-sized holes on all the brake parts.
Jan 24
1.7hrs
Practiced cutting with the Joint Jigger. This weekend, time to cut the tubing for the bungee truss then onto the
fuselage.
Jan 27
1.9hrs
The Joint Jigger couldn't cut the EXTREME angle that I needed to cut two o the bungee truss tubes
at (wouldn't allow it to be centered on the piece) so I cut part of the tube to give me a pattern to go by then
ground down the rest of the tube to fit. Worked out great.
Jan 28
2.2hrs
Did cuts on a practice tube before cutting the actual tube with the Joint Jigger. Dead on each time. I'm quadruple checking and then
re-checking again so as not to make a bad cut. Still need to cut one other tube, then tack together.
Jan 30
2.2hrs
Working on the bungee truss. Finished cutting down and notching the tubing.
Jan 31
1.2hrs
Cut, ground down and sanded all four bungee "caps."
Feb 2
1hr
Final trim and fit of tubes. Tacked the one side. Wasn't sure if I was
to pull it out and tack the other then put it back in to drill the holes so I threw the question out to the biplane forum.
Feb 3
3hrs
Got an answer. Take out and tack other side (so I did.) Placed back in jig and drilled all four holes
in bungee truss. Took out and centered Bungee cord "hangers." Tack welded hangers onto truss then re-inserted into jig to get it square and put a few more tack welds on hangers.
Feb 4
2hrs
Began welding up the bungee truss.
Feb 6
1.9hrs
Started cutting the tubing for the fuselage. Only cut three tubes. Spent the rest of the time re-reading and checking to make sure that
I'm covering everything that I need to do to do it right. Another thing that slowed me down... I have the fuselage table in the garage and the chop saw in the basement. Up and down, up and down.
Feb 7
1.6hrs
Cut and fitted all the upper and lower longeron tubes for the one side.
Feb 9
2hrs
Drilled four each rosette weld hole in each of three tubes. Welded four rosetee welds on forward bottom longeron and
made the scarf joint weld too. Not bad.
Feb 10
1.7hrs
Welded up three sets of four rosettes and scarf joints. Getting a lot of bending from all that
heat.
.9
Took the BIG AW207 out of it's package and continued welding up the bungee truss. Still some to do on it.
Feb 11
.6hrs
Took the AW207 to the bends that were in the upper and lower longerons, from me welding up the rossetes and scarf joints. Made short order of straightening them out.
Started putting the welds on the bungee hangers. Did a quarter of one and started on another. Ran out of acetylene. Knew I was close. Got tired of giving it back to the gas company. Tomorrow I'll pick up a new tank.
Feb 12
.9hrs
Fighting with the torch tonight. Nothing I did seemed to work. Large tip or small tip more gas less gas. There's a lot of 1 1/8" x .o65 tubing
in this cluster. Maybe I need to really heat the surrounding area a lot more than I am. A thought.
Feb 13
1hrs
That's the ticket. A little bit more time spent on heating up the tubing and hardly a pop. Just two little areas to
weld and it'll be finished... the bungee truss that is.
Feb 16
2.1hrs
Started fitting up the tubing to the first fuselage side.
Feb 17
2.2hrs
Continued fitting up and cutting the tubing for the fuselage side.
Feb 18
3.1hrs
Heated and bent the fuselage side at station 49.06 then measured cut and notched more tubing.
Feb 20
3.1hrs
More measuring, cutting and notching. Another few hours work and I'll be tack welding it up.
Feb 21
2.4hrs
Still more measuring, cutting and notching. Got all except the last tube cut and fitted. (this will be left for when I square up the sides and
fit the top and bottom tubes in place then finally tack the tailpost in postion. Still need to drill the holes for allowing the oil to coat the insides then it's time to tack.
Feb 23
1.8hrs
Marked and drilled holes for oil. Re-rigged fuselage side. Figured blocks needed to hold tubing centered on each other are .0625 and .125. I'll use the metal flatstock that I have instead of cutting wood blocks.
Feb 24
1.6hrs
Tacked together the first fuselage side, both sides.
Feb 25
.5hrs
Spent a heck of a lot more than 1/2 hour with the biplane tonight. Only worth 1/2 hours of time in the logs though.
Spent time measuring and cutting some of the longeron tubes and the vertical tube at station 0.o. Also measured the addtional lengths of tubes for the longerons.
March 2
3.6hrs
Spent 1.8hrs cutting the holes for the three sets of six rossette welds and then spent the remaining 1.8hrs welding those rossette welds and the three scarf welds.
Mar 3
2.4hrs
Started measuring, cutting and notching the tubing for the second fuselage side. Spent 1 hour just notching that
first extreme angled tube, section 0.o to 5.o.
Mar 4
2.2hrs
Continued measuring, cutting and notching tubing.
Mar 6
2.5hrs
Aligned and tack welded the fuselage side forward of section 49.06. Heated and bent the lower longeron to sit at the
correct angle and set it in it's jigging. Measure, cut and notched a few more pieces of tubing.
Mar 8
2.9hrs
Spent the day measuring, cutting and notching the remaining tubes.
Mar 9
1.9hrs
Drilled oil access holes, aligned tubes then tacked both sides of the second fuselage side.
Mar 10
1.8hrs
Drew top-side of fuselage on MDF boards I had cut.
March 12
2.8hrs
Re-checked the lines aft of station 49.o6. They were a little skewd. Sanded off lines, made sure the two pieces of MDF were
square with each other and re-drew the lines to the tailpost. Took several different cross measurements with a line, then checked with the tape measure. Pretty much dead on. Took the jig blocks off the jig table
and then attached the jig blocks for the longerons, per the Skybolt Manual (biplane forum.)
Mar 13
1.3hrs
Aligned, squared up and attached MDF boards to jig tables.
Mar 15
1.8hrs
Cut boards for jig to keep the top (acutally the bottom) of the fuselage 30 inches on center. Went to put the fuselage sides in jig and found that the
aft end was warped so that it would not sit flat in the jig. Need to heat so that it'll lay flat.
Mar 16
2hrs
Tried heating top longeron to take out the warp. No luck. Didn't do a thing to it. After thinking it through I figured it was a jigging problem since both
were "cupped" exactly the same.
Mar 17
2.hrs
Spoke to Neil (one of the guys from the biplane forum) after I measured and snapped a line and saw that
the top longeron was 2 inches higher at station 168.o than it was at station 51.o. I struck a new line for the top longeron, cut the tack welds from the bottom longeron
aft of station 51.o. I'll retack all except three of these tubes. I'll cut one of these down and reuse it and the other two I'll need to replace.
Mar 19
3.1hrs
Double checked the straightness of the top longeron by snapping a chalk line to it. The line was where it was suppose to be.
Needed to take the other three angled tubes that I had left tacked last time and break the tack welds so that I could cut and notch the three new pieces of tubing to replace the three I couldn't reuse. Tomorrow I'll tack
these in place and put the other fuselage side in the jig.
Mar 20
1.4hrs
Tack welded the first fuselage side. Took a look at the second fuselage side and said that ain't gonna cut it. Cut the tack welds off the top longeron. I have the material to cut
new tubing for the top longeron. I'll start on that my next session than I'll it in the jig and start measruing, cutting and notching the angled tubes.
Mar 23
1.0hrs
The Upper Longeron. Cut upper longeron tubes for second fuselage side. Cut scarf joint and drilled holes for six rossette welds.
Mar 26
.8hrs
Welded up the six rossettes and the one scarf joint.
Mar 30
4.9hrs
Welded top longeron to existing fuselage side forward of station 51. Cut all remaining angled tubes from fuselage side, repostioned bottom longeron, measured, cut and tacked in
all angled tubing. Ready to flip upside-down and begin putting in cross tubes.
Mar 31
2.3hrs
Cleared off the fuselage side table and brought the two MDF table tops to the garage workshop
attach and get level. A little over two hours and I'm just about to the point of being happy with it's levelness (wurd ?)
Apr 2
2.3hrs
Finally got that table square and level. Attached the sides to the top and will begin squaring them up tomorrow.
699.9 hrs Damn ! just shy of 700 hrs.
Apr 3
1.3hrs
Put the cross wires in forward of station 51 to square up the front "box" of the fuselage. Next... I'll be fitting the cross tubes.
Now it's 700 hours !
Apr 5
1hr
Fine-tuned the squaring up of the front portion of the fuselage, Looked over the
dwgs of the fuselage for both the Standard and the Radial version. The tailpost is 1" dia for the Standard and 7/8" for the Radial. I'm building the tail feathers using the
dwgs with the original Skybolt, like you're suppose to. Wonder if the 7/8" is wrong. Threw the question out to the group.
Apr 6
1.5hrs
Review of dwgs and chapter in manual that pertains to the fuselage. Comparing the Standard to the Radial version.
Apr 7
1.7hrs
Another look at the manual to make sure that I'm doing the right thing. Cut and notched two tubes; station 24.o and 51.o. (really moving along.)
Apr 10
1.5hrs
Worked on making patterns for the throttle quad.
Apr 11
n/a
Actually spent 2 hours working on the patterns for the throttle quad. Tried using my "custom" router table. Set the height, locked it in. And DAMN ! for some reason it started eating at the "pattern" piece that I had cut to route a bottom piece for the jig. Made an additional pattern. Re-set the router bit height and again and DAMN ! the same thing happened. I'm not putting anything as far as hours on the project. Didn't do a damn thing.
Apr 12
5.4hrs
Got quite a bit accomplished on the fuselage today. Measured, cut and notched the top cross tubes for stations 0.o, 24.o and 51.o. Measured, cut and notched the bottom cross tubes for stations 26.o and 49.o6. Also trimmed and fitted the bungee truss the I had made earlier.
Apr 12
n/a
Cut an additional pattern for the throttle quad. Same thing happened with the router bit. It crept up and ate a few chunks out of my pattern. Guess I'll be looking for a router table.
Apr 13
2hrs
Measured, cut and notched the cross tube for the lower station 0.o. Actually cut it twice. Guess I needed the practice.
Apr 15
2hrs
Drilled oil access holes at stations 0.o, 24.o, 49.o6, 25.o and 51.o. Used a drilling block to keep the bit from running all over the place. Also drilled the 1" hole for the tailpost. Checked the Skybolt manual again to make sure I'm not skipping over anything. Started to square up the bungee truss but saw that I need to heat the one side a little bit to straighten it out more.
Apr 17
1.5hrs
Realized that rubber tubing (covering the wire on the x-braces) won't last very long next to a 5000 degree flame. Spent the night cutting the tubing off the wire bracing and then squaring up the fuselage again.
Apr 20
1.4hrs
Made three bending blocks; 1/8", 1/4", and 1/2". Still need to find a few good carbide tipped router bits to make a few more sizes.