October 17, 2009
    The wait...
                        welding this gear takes a lot of patience

Back to the out-building to work on the gear a little, er a lot, more. They weren't kidding when they said it would take a lot of heat to get the puddle flowing with the Main Landing Gear.

There are three things you need to remind yourself when welding up these heavy areas on the Main Lanidng Gear. When you start, you need to remind yourself to be paitent; wait until the area around the weld is fully heated so that you get a nice golden puddle flowing. Five minutes later, you need to remind yourself to be paitent; wait until the area around the weld is fully heated so that you get a nice golden puddle flowing. After you've gotten that first weld line finished and you need to get another stick of weld rod... you need to remind yourself to be paitent; wait until the area around the weld is fully heated so that you get a nice golden puddle flowing.

I should have spent the money to buy a TIG set-up. NOT !

Maybe on the next build I'll get that TIG machine, but I'm fine with using O/A on this beast. Old school, start to finish.

Close to five hours of work today... was able to weld up the second "box" and both rear tube to axle joints.

Here are a few pictures of the work I did today.

October 25, 2009
    More of the same...
                        just a little bit faster

Today I welded on a few more pieces of the Main Landing Gear. No BIG clusters this time... aka not as much patience needed. Still took a bit of time to do what I planned on doing.

Welded on the cross-tube so that I could begin welding on the streamline tubing. Once I got the cross-tube in place I needed to fine tune a few of the notches I had made in the streamline tubing. Not a problem... just took a little time away from the task I thought I would be doing; welding.

Other than a few contortions in trying to get at some of the welds on the streamline tubing... everything was pretty much the same as any welding job. Enjoyed it as always.

A few more welds and I can cut the cross-tube in half and weld on all those straps. Should be a piece of cake... should be.

November 29, 2009
    I can't believe it...
                        all that time wasted

FINALLY back to working on the Main Landing Gear, hell, finally back to working on the biplane, period. Made a few additional welds to the tubing and welded on the brake backing plates... then I cut the center X-tube in half so that I could start welding the final straps on to it and finsih weld the tubes to the forward bushings.

Thought I had some pretty good tack welds on the front tube to bushing connections... needed to really smack the 7/16" tube, holding the front bushing on, to get it out of the bushing. Ahh... a little TOO hard. (son of a b!) The tack welds broke. Yeah... nice. Just what I wanted to happen. Spent an additional half hour aligning the tacks to re-tack. Looks real good. Guess I'll find out when I start tracking down the runway.

Getting late so I packed it up and headed home. I'll finish welding up the Main Landing Gear next week. Looks like I'll be moving the fuselage out of the building too. The lease is up on it... it'll need to find a new home.

December 6, 2009
    Back at it...
                        like there's no tomorrow.

Not quite that back into it... yet, but I'm makin' progress again.

Back to the back building in Cherry Hill. Denise gave her two weeks and it looks like that means the end of it's use. Nice while it lasted. Thank you Denise.

Luck has it that I cut the Main Landing Gear off the last time I was there. Today I spent a little over three hours bending two of the straps around the front tubes/bushings. I was fighting with it at first... trying to make it lay on there straight. Stood back and took a look at the entire piece and discovered that no way in hell was it going to lay on there looking straight... the one front tube connects to the other one at an angle. Duuuuuuh !

Anywho... after I got past that fopa, I was cookin' with oil. Got it to the point where it was close to being as closely wrapped as I could get it. Tacked it along the way. I'll go back on Saturday and get the bend to follow the contour a little better than weld it up and haul it out. Actually, maybe I'll haul it out and then weld it up.

After I get these straps welded on I can then slip the wheels on and it's gonna start to REALLY look like that biplane. Oh yeah... need to get the set-up for the tailwheel done before I can start makin' noises.

(another) Oh yeah... remembering now that I started the session off by finish welding the front tube to bushing joint.

December 12, 2009
    The move...
                        a little premature.

As mentioned before... I needed to move the fuselage out of the back building. Did that today. Still needed to weld on several of the re-inforcing straps but that can easily be done at my place.

Seven hours and the only evidence of me being there is a little bag of trash and a pile of metal grind-dust.

The Main Fuselage was taken over to Whitey's airport and the Main Gear was taken to my place. A few hours of strap welding and a little more strap heating and bending and I'll be able to connect the gear and do a trial fit of the radial up on it (ya know... hold it up into position.) This will allow me to see where I'll need to run cables/push-pull tubes and see how I want to fair out the fuselage with the fairing stand-offs.

December 18, 2009
    Break up the monotony...
                        of coming home and vegging out.

A Friday night... after a long day at work. Picked up the torch and welded damn-near one complete strap on the forward bushing on the first Main Landing Gear.

Need to cut a few "filler" pieces to fit into the two side areas that didn't lay as close to the tubing as I would have wanted them to. Another 1/2 hour and this one should be completed. Then moving on to the next.

Nothing new to write/learn tonight... other than you just need to push yourself over that small hump to keep things going. Once you're doing it, you get that great satisfied feeling again. Sa-weet !

December 19, 2009
    Back...
                in the groove.

Yes... cut those four "filler" pieces and continued my progress towards getting the biplane finished for a 2011 flight.

Quite a bit of welding was done today. Didn't stop until those two foward gear attachment bushing areas thing-a-ma-jig-whatever-you-call-them were welded up.

Braved the elements as I was doing it too. Today was a HUGE snow storm here on the east coast. We usually don't get a snow until January/February. This thing is dumping at least two feet of snow. The temps are just hovering above 20. Not much difference between outside and the garage where I was welding. That 6000 degree torch helped take the edge off.

All I need to do now is grind the inside ends of the cross-tubes and weld the straps on those areas and I'll be finished. I hope there isn't much twisting with all this heat. I guess I'll find out when I re-attach them to the fuselage. I'll jump that hurdle when it arrives.

I'm hearing that song from "Welcome Back Kotter." Welcome back... your dreams are your ticket out...

December 26, 2009
    If it wasn't 53 degrees today...
              I'd be shoveling snow...
                   instead of welding up my landing gear.

Felt good. Spent two and a half hours on the support strap that is welded to the cross-tube-to-streamlined tube junture. Nothing new to write. Yeah... the typical taking your time to heat and bend the .063 strap, tacking it and then the joy of pushing that golden puddle around for a few hours. I just can't get enough of that.

Another similar strap to do tomorrow... and the two straps for the streamline tubing to the axle junctures to follow. Keep forgetting about them until I see those extra long pieces of tube sticking out the back end of the axles.

I'm thankful for the warm weather. Spent close to 12 hours last weekend shoveling. This week I'm just dodging rain drops.

An, oh by the way...
I had enough cash from Santa to buy a new Dremel 4000 today. The other one, which was about 15 years old, went south on me about two weeks ago. You don't realize how much you use your tools until you don't have it/them to use any more. Thank you Santa!

A belated Merry Christmas to all of you.

December 28, 2009
    Are we there yet?

Yeah... the gold old days of riding in the car with Mom... And with any part of the plane that has A LOT of tiny steps to get you to the point of a finished project. These two main landing gear legs are one of many like that. Think you're "there" when there is a lot to go before getting "there."

I need to cut four gussets for making the streamlined tubing to round tubing a more streamline transition. I'll do that tomorrow and then weld them into place. After that I still need to grind the excess axles off the back-end of the axles and then weld on those two final straps. THEN and only THEN will I be ready to slide the wheels on and fit them back onto the fuselage. HOPEFULLY they haven't twisted too much.

After re-attaching them onto the fuselage I still need to weld on the ribs that go from the front main tube to the back main tube. Matter of fact... I still need to bend those. Knew it, just haven't gotten around to it yet.

Dennis... just a little bit longer.

I don't know if you can make it out, but the horizontal tube in the photo is the streamlined tube. It kinda ends abruptly. I'll be cutting a triangular gusset for all four of the sides so that this will be a better streamlined transition.

December 30, 2009
    A few more things to do...
              before they're ready to be re-attached.

For the past two night I've been working on welding on the gussets for the ends of the X-tubes. Finished those up tonight. Now it's time to work on the areas around the back-end of the axles.

Need to grind those areas down, cut a few small pieces of 4130 for a smooth streamline tube to round tube transition.

An oh by the way... when you are cutting the tubing and grind it down, on the ends of the two X-tube tubes, make sure that you round them, not cut them at an angle like I did. I think they look better rounded. Look "OK" angled... but look better rounded. Just an FYI... just a heads up. There's nothing wrong with the cut I made. Just now if I wanted to make it rounded, I'd have to grind off all of the strap material. Ain't worth it.

December 31, 2009
    More snow...
              no shoveling... time to work on the biplane.

Yep... started snowing about 6AM today. By 8AM the ground had over an inch on it.

I lied, I shoveled a little. Five minutes and I was done.

No excuse not to work on the biplane sometime today. Either do the back-end of the axles or something on a few of the ribs I need to modify. Purchased some 1/4" balsa wood strips to sandwich in a few of the plywood covered areas that will be getting large hole made in them for passage of push-pull tubes.

As you can see... I haven't started on anything yet. Up here writing. Why? Um... I dunno.

Later that day...
Just put in close to three hours of grinding and welding. Took close to 1 1/2 hours to grind the back-end of the axles off. Then I thought it would be no problem welding on both of the straps. Think again. at the 2.9 hours mark I called it a day and wrapped things up; only one strap had been welded on at that point. Thought I would be finished the gear before the end of the year. But, I'm not about to spend New Years Eve working on the biplane... no matter how much I enjoy it.

That axle takes a lot of heat to get a puddle going. Don't rush things here... you'll have a bad weld joint if you do.

Here's a photo of tonight's work. Looking closely, you can see that I still need to attach the "streamline ends" on the streamline tubing.

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