March 22, 2020 Now that all the horizontal and vertical stabilizer parts have cured for a day we're ready to start assembling and riveting. It was a lovely day in the garage with a steady rain right outside the door. All of the skins use flush rivets, which require a dimple in the skin and... Continue Reading →

March 19 & 20, 2020 The heater finally arrived and like the fierce ball of fire that it is, it is great at heating the garage. We've decided to prime all the internal surfaces, for simplicity and resale value. I had to work today so I left Paul to take the first stab at priming.... Continue Reading →

March 15, 2020 The replacement stiffener for the horizontal stabilizer finally arrived! We re-worked that stiffener up to the point it was ready for installation and then continued with the match drilling that we couldn't do previously with the bad part. After that it was a solid 8 hrs of disassembly and deburring of both... Continue Reading →

March 10 & 12, 2020 While we're waiting on the replacement part from Vans to be able to finish the horizontal stabilizer Paul got started on the vertical stabilizer. Generally it's the same process on a different part - deburr, cleco, match drill, disassemble, and deburr some more. Everything with the VS went pretty smoothly... Continue Reading →

March 9, 2020 Today was all about aligning and drilling but by the time I got home, Paul had one half of the horizontal stabilizer assembled with the skin clecoed on. It was an identifiable airplane part and we're only two days into the build!!! While I was at work Paul sorted out left and... Continue Reading →

March 8, 2020 We finally started work on the empennage. It's been three months since we ordered the kit, 1 month since we finally had all the tools in hand, and 0 days since we finished the EAA SportAir workshop. The class ended around noon on Sunday and we were so excited to get started... Continue Reading →

We've had the empennage boxes in the garage for over a week now without touching them. In that time we've done a lot of cleaning, sorting, and miscellaneous other things around the shop in preparation. This weekend we finally opened the two boxes and completed the inventory. It's really exciting to see airplane shaped parts... Continue Reading →