(Tech Counselor Visit):
This morning Martin & Claudia Sutter came by for our first
tech counselor visit… very nice people! They have a long
history with RVs and have built quite a few (I forget the exact number)
including the older type kits that were not prepunched... now that's
building an airplane! I have a lot of respect for anyone that's
built one of those! Anyway, the EAA's tech counselor program is a
wonderful deal! Totally voluntary, and they provide an invaluable
service keeping newbies like Angela & I on the straight and
narrow! I made it a point to bring up all the "questionable"
items I could remember from the build (things like boogered up rivets,
dents & dings, etc) and had Martin check them out... he said they
were all very minor and nothing to worry about. I also picked his
brain a bit on techniques for certain things (but thought of 20 more as
soon as they left!) Overall the verdict was the quality of our
build so far is definitely above average, and far exceeds anything in
the production factories... Our family out there following the build
should be very excited to hear that ;-) Here's the first of our
Tech Counselor Visit Reports... We'll have at least 3 more of these
before we're done with the plane.
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| (10-16 step 3): Now…
back to work! Just before Martin & Claudia arrived I noticed
we still had a few more dimples on the side skins to do. The
rivet holes in the curved portion of the skins was a little difficult
to do solo so I waited until Angela could help. I guess I had
forgotten about them. So, we got 'em done before she sped off to
work. She's supposed to be off today, but duty calls! |
(10-17 step 3):
Next up was to continue with alodining… Well… this
stuff is difinitely OLD. I'm getting marginal results even
leaving parts immersed for 10min… Let me tell you that gets
reeeeaaallll boring when you can only do a couple at a time.
Check out the contraption in the pic below. I glued an endcap on
each of 2 pieces of 10'x2" pvc, clamped a couple of 2x4 blocks to the
table to keep the tubes from rolling around, and them propped them up
between the two tables. I then filled one with alumiprep, and the
other with alodine to slide the longerons and stiffeners into.
Doing two at a time this took forever! This is definitely the
last job this batch-o-chemicals will be used for. I also found a
couple of shallow 3'x18" plastic tubs to do the bublkheads in and
originally I expected to get all the remaining parts done today... but
the sun had other plans! Soooo, I've got just a few more parts to
do tomorrow morning. Can't wait ;-)
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