Drilled the holes for oil access in the passenger hand hold area. Welded on all four bungee stops. Happy with the welds,
unhappy with the look of the "burnt off" edges. Will redo. Started to grind off bungee stops.
Jul 2
2.1hrs
Ground off all the bungee stops/caps, Printed out CAD drawings for bungee stops/caps and glued them to a piece of .080 4130 flatstock. (Note: it's a little bit thicker than the .063 that the Standard Skybolt called out for
but they looked a little flimsy after I had them welded to the bungee truss. An extra .017 thickness on these small pieces isn't going to amount to much weight. Cut all four out with the bandsaw then ground down to a finish size and finished off with
180 grit on the sanding belt to smooth out the edges.
Jul 3
1.5hrs
Made a jig to hold bungee stops in position. Tacked on bungee stops.
1.6hrs
Welded on bungee stops. (nice looking - no burn off with the extra overhang) Aligned and tacked bungee truss onto fuselage
at station 5.o
Jul 4
.6hrs
Took out most of the jig blocks (all except the outside ones) and flipped the fuselage. Of course, .4 of these hours was
cleaning off the table : )
Jul 5
2.8hrs
Flipped the fuselage and blocked it up off the table. Sanded of the old lines then laid out and drew on centering lines for bottom side of fuselage.
Attached blocks up to station 49.o6 . Beyond station 49.o6 the fuselage bends upward. I'll block the back section after having completed notching and tack welding tubes for forward section.
Jul 6
2.1hrs
Started measuring, cutting and notching lower cross tubes on fuselage.
Jul 7
1.8hrs
Finished notching the one tube and used it as a pattern to notch the other tube in the "V" pattern at that
station. Only 18 more to go.
Jul 9
3.6hrs
Notched and fitted all five tubes that are in area Sta 26 to Sta 49.o6.
Jul 10
3 hrs
Lets chalk up tonight to a night of learning. Issues with the bungee truss pointing up instead of
the hydraulic truss pointing down. Laid out a new bungee truss to look more like the hydraulic truss but it's still going to be real close to the intercostal tubes that
come over the tops of it. Need to talk with some people.
Jul 14
1.5hrs
Still waiting to hear back from Steen on what to do with the bungee truss. I've had a lot of input from the guys on the
biplane forum. Some of them having built, or are building a radial version Skybolt.
Spent the night reviewing the horizontal stabalizer and elevator drawings. Went down to get the jig I had made for the stabilizer to draw out and block the elevators and found that it
was pretty warped. Too late to go to Home Depot. Had to call it an early night.
Jul 17
1.5hrs
New sheet of MDF. Cut down to 60"x48". Laid out all the dims on the
sheet.
Jul 20
5hrs
Put several blocks in new horz stab jig using one of the bent tubes. Tried placing other tube in jig and it was a little off. Spent all day today
trying to get 2nd tube to fit just like the first. Almost there...
Jul 21
1hr
Final tweaking of that one horizontal stabilizer leading edge
1.5hrs
Drawing elevator onto jig board.
Jul 23
2.5hrs
Drew out the rest of the stab and elevators. Started blocking jig and cutting additional tubing.
1hr
Referencing images on forum to make sure that I'm laying out the ribs correctly. Also reviewed manual to make sure that I'm not
leaving out anything.
Jul 24
3.3hrs
Flattened the ends of both the leading edge of the right stabilizer and the front spar on the right elevator. Spent most of the night bending the
trailing edge of the right elevator.
Jul 26
1.6hrs
Laid out Elevator Horns and Servo Trim Tab ribs on CAD.
Jul 27
1.2hrs
Started bending 2nd elevator trailing edge. Still have another 1.5 hrs to go on bending it.
Jul 28
1.2hrs
More bending of the elevator trailing edge.
Jul 29
1.3hrs
Recieved the throttle knobs today. Beeeeutiful! Tops of the Mixture levers needed to be bent over a little bit more to give a little bit more space between it and the throttle knob.
Drilled the holes in the levers to accept the 10-32 screws for the knobs. Ground and sanded edges of levers for a rounded, finished shape.
Jul 30
.5hrs
Rounded the sharp edges on levers that I worked on yesterday. Sanded and applied another coat of primer.
.5hrs
Continued bending on the trailing edge of the second elevator. Almost there.
Aug 2
.7hrs
More bending of the trailing edge of elevator
Spent about an hour today messing with cutting the round label for the throttle knobs. Ain't gonna put that down as hours towards completion though.
Aug 3
1hr
Finally Finished bending it.Got the right shape for the trailing edge.
1hr
Hammered down the end of the 2nd horizontal stabilizer leading edge. Cut the tubing for the rear spar for the 2nd horizontal stab. Cut the tubing for the 2nd
forward spar of the 2nd elevator. Hammered down the end also.
Aug4
.7hrs
Decided that there wasn't enough flat surface on the top of the levers to allow the 10-32 bolts get a good
solid grip on the knobs. Spent approx. 45 minutes trying to make it work. Never got to that point. Unhappy with end result. Time to make new ones.
3hrs
Reprinted CAD drawings for levers. Cut, drilled, ground down the bottom ends and bent into shape four new levers. Still need to bend the tops.
Aug 6
2hrs
Started to align the metal ribs for the horz stab and elevators. Took a look at the metal ribs I bought and decided against it.
Spent the rest of the time measuring and figuring our how much material I need to buy to make all new metal ribs.
Aug 7
2hrs
Drew out all the metal ribs for the horz stab, vert stab, elevators, rudder and trim servo tabs on CAD. Will have Rob at work print them out tomorrow.
Aug 8
Rob wasn't at work today. : (
Aug 10
2hrs
Welded the washers onto the throttle levers then put the additional bends in them. Need to still cut
and round the "tonges" on them and then they are ready to be primed and painted.
Aug 11
1hr
Cleaning up and rounding off the sharp edges of the levers. Still more to be done on them.
Aug 13
2hrs
Finished filing and smoothing out the throttle levers. Did a dry run by putting one together. The balls hit... I'll need to bend the mixture level down a little bit more.
Aug 14
.1hrs
Yeah... that's not a typo. .1 hrs That old adage... work on it each night you can, no matter how little it is. Took the one throttle quad apart and made the bends to both
mixture levers. They are ready to be painted !
Aug 16
1.1hrs
Sprayed first coat of primer on throttle levers. Cut out patterns for four metal ribs, glued to .o32 4130, cut on bandsaw and then
ground down to size. A lot quicker than I thought it would be.
Aug 17
.9hrs
Sprayed addtional primer coat onto levers. Sprayed two coats of white onto lever (heard that white under a color makes it "pop."
3.2
Glued patterns for 15 metal ribs, cut out with bandsaw then ground sides to size.
Aug 18
.9hrs
Finish painting the throttle levers.
4.5hrs
Cut and trimmed the remaining metal ribs for the tail group.
1.9hrs
CAD work. Drew up the Stick Boot, Aileron Actuating Arm, Servo Horn, Tab Horn and Servo Trim Shaft.
Aug 19
5.3hrs
Still waiting to hear back from everyone on the bungee truss. Decided to measure, cut and notch the tubes in the back portion of the fuselage. Started off by attaching the centering blocks then notched four of the tubes.
Aug 20
3.1hrs
Finsihed up the notching the last tube in the back section of the lower fuselage. Re-notched one of the tubes that had previously
been tack welded to the top portion of the fuselage.
Aug 21
First Tech Inspection - Whitey Lance
(3hrs)
First Tech inspection. Done by Whitey Lance. Great guy. Said my welds looked great and I was doing a good job. Mostly sat around having coffee
talking about airplanes. Interesting guy. I'll only put a half hour towards the build for this.
3.2hrs
Measuring, cutting and notching the additional diagonal tubes in the rear-lower fuselage. Called
the person that Steen suggested that I talk to about the truss. Didn't get much information other than to make sure that you keep the truss over the front pivot point of the landing gear.
Went back out to the workshop and did a lot of head scratching about what to do with the bungee truss. Hmmmm.......
3.2
After going back out into the shop to look at the up-side down fuslage and cutting the tack welds from the truss to move it around I came to the conclusion that the truss needs to stay
where it is. I will weld the intercoastals going from the upper longerons, at station 24.o, down the the cross tube at station 0.o two inches off center. I will then weld a gusset to the
top and bottom of the tubes at the instersection of station 0.o to strength the area and to help spread the load. Tacked the truss back into place. Re-adjusted a few of the diagonal tubes on the bottom of the fuselage where I saw that I didn't "square" them up to
the bottom portion of the tube. Flipped the fuselage right-side up, made a few more adjustments to the tubing. I'll start working on the front three bays tomorrow. Still lots to do before putting this puppy on the spinner for final welding.
Aug 22
(2.5hrs)
Drove over to Whitey Lance's place (he owns an airport) to talk about airplanes and pick up a bending brake. (not adding hours to build)
1.9hrs
Started making bends on the bending brake. Did a test sample and it looked beautiful. Made bends on a few of the shorter pieces and they looked great.
Stated to bend one that was 23" long, took it out of the btrake and it looked like a bowl. Tried making a few adjustments but it's so rusted I was unable to turn any of the adjustment knobs. Looks like I'll be buying that one from Harbor Freight. Ended up with five of the smaller ones
that look real good. One long rib that is ruined.
1.0hrs
Back out to the workshop to turn piece int he tubing that I had cut for the front area of the fuselage and to tack all the peices in. I'm now ready to measure, cut and notch the nine intercoastal tubes... then it's on to finish welding the fuselage.
Aug 23
1.5hrs
Referring back to the plans I noticed that I held off on inserting the bottom tubes going from the center of station 0.o to the lower longerons of station 5.o. Now that I am keeping the bungee truss at that location
I need to measure, cut and notch these in. Took 1.5 hours to notch one by hand. I'll use this as a pattern for the next one. Should only take me 15 minutes to a half hour to do. Then on to the intercoastals... I think.
Aug 24
5.6hrs
Measured, cut and notched five tubes; final floor diagonal from 0.o to 5.o, both diagonals from the upper longerons to the lower longerons at station 0.o and
the front notches for the two intercoastals going from station 24.o to station 0.o. These are the intercoastals that I've been scratching my head for some time now.