Time for a Christmas Break

Wednesday, 10 December 2008

 This picture was over a month ago on November 9th.  At this point we still had a little finishing up to do, but this is more or less how the hanger looks today.  The electrician was scheduled to install the electrical box and make the required arrangements with Hydro to get our power hooked up, but at the moment, I am not too sure how far things have progressed.

All this snow is the main reason I decided to write an update for the web page today.  A plow has not come down my street yet, and I am pretty much stuck at home.  If I had my winter tires on I might stand a chance, but things have been a little busy, and I haven't managed to get around to putting them on yet.

Since I was sitting at home anyways I decided I might as well make an attempt at putting on those winter tires.  First step was to clean out my garage so I have a place to work... This ment moving the airplane pieces I am storing into my living room.  In my mind nothing says Bachelor Pad like airplane pieces sitting in your living room.

So my car made it into the garage, and I will let it warm up and dry off a bit before I switch up the tires.

As for the hanger it looks like we are in for a bit of a break.  We still need to finish wiring up the lights, and install some weather stripping around the main door before we can call the project complete, but Scott is off to New York this week-end, and I am heading back to Regina on the 16th, so it looks like this may be it until after Christmas.
I think Scott and I are both looking forward to leaving the hanger project behind, and getting back to building our airplane in the new year.
 So for the moment, Merry Christmas, and Happy New Year.

Hangar Progress or 'This is the project that never ends'

Sorry for the lack of updates since August.  We've been concentrating on finishing up the hangar (which is taking much longer than expected and llike the title says is the project that never ends).

Since the last update we've wrapped up all the strapping, bracing and supports.  We started installing the steel siding and windows.

 At the end of the weekend where we started putting up the steel we had the majority of the side steel and the back wall and gable installed.

The gable steel took a lot longer than expected but the crew working on the walls made fast progress and at the end of the weekend we had much of the steel installed.

 Sadly I had to take a business trip and was away from the area for a couple of weekend which slowed down progress considerably (to make things worse the weather was great on both weekends).  However, we continued to work on the steel and with the help of one of Phil's friends we got the roof steel installed in one day (other than the last two sheets). We then came back and worked on the front walls and gable.

We came back one day after work (okay, we left at 2:00) and finished up the gable steel, installed the last two roof sheets and finished up the ridge cap (actually Darren finished up the ridge cap -- he moves like a monkey on the roof...a very brave monkey). We also worked this Saturday and installed the track and, as you can see in the photo, we have one door section installed. 

At this point we have to wrap up door installation, install some eave closure strips and install the lights.  We should be done the majority of the work by the end of next weekend.

Hanger Progress

Phil was off at a Wedding for most of the weekend, so Scott and I went out on the Saturday, and were joined by one of our good friends, Richard, on the Sunday.
We discovered when you get down to two guys working on a project progress is slow. Richard's help was greatly appreciated.
 We made a lot of progress, but there is probably at least one more day of labour required before we will be able to start putting up the steel.

Richard working on some strapping.

 Scott Reloading the nail gun, The gun sure does speed things along at this point.

Darren sitting back, relaxing, and taking it all in.

Yes it is pretty high up. 14 foot walls, and a little over 10 from the top of the wall to the top of the peak.

We made it about half way up both sides of the roof with the strapping, and finished up most of the rest of the bracing.

 A wide angle shot of progress up to this point.

 Scott and I decided to take a well deserved day off on Labour Day.

Hanger trusses are up.

The trusses actually actually went up on Tuesday August 26th, but I did not bring my camera out that day.
One of Phil's friends, Steve, took a few pictures of the actual event you can check them out here:
http://picasaweb.google.com/ehv8tor/PhilSHanger?authkey=KmcQW_04DB8
Phil could not get off of work on the Wednesday, but Scott and I were a little worried about the stability of the trusses, so we thought we better make it back out on the Wednesday to add the little bracing.  Here are a few current pictures of the hanger.

Finishing up hanger walls

Here are a few picture from the day we finished up the hanger wall construction.  We are now waiting on the arrival of our trusses before we can proceed.

Hangar construction

We spent the long weekend working on framing our new hangar.  We're building a 50'x50'x14' hangar out at the Smiths Falls/Montague airport.   

113' of 160' have been raised, most of the strapping has been installed and many of the remaining sections have been framed.  We'll wrap up the framing next Saturday and the trusses will be delivered next week.

Right wing main spar

Unfortunately the right wing main spar had the same problem as the left one.  We spent some time tonight trying to fix the mis-bent spar.

Left Wing Skeleton

After fixing the spar on Tuesday night we reassembled the left wing skeleton and finished match drilling the remaining holes.  We then prepped and primed all the ribs and the remaining parts of the rear spar.  It was a ton of repetitive work but now the left wing is ready for assembly.  We're setting it aside for a few weeks and moving onto the right wing main spar (hopefully that one was done correctly -- I'm not betting on it) while we wait for some conduit to arrive. 

Spar flange fix

Well, tonight we had to do something we should never of had to do.  Van's shipped us a main wing spar that was underbent.  You can see that the ribs and the spar flange weren't flush from the last set of pictures.  What this meant is that we needed to essentially reverse the bend on the main spar.  We were hoping that we had done something wrong and that a quick fix could be made.  However, it turns out that the mistake was Van's.  The latest edition of the RVator (the bi-monthly journal from Van's) had a similar story of an RV-9 builder with the same problem so the fix was really clear.  Anyways, we're not happy we had to spend a night fixing a problem that would've been much much easier to get right in the first place.

The "good" flange (bent inwards)

The incorrectly bent flange (bent outwards)

Scott using the hi-tech bending tool to slowly bend the spar flange

Ribs, ribs and more ribs (plus some assembly)

Today was almost all about deburring, cleaning, straightening and fluting all the ribs for both wings and both fuel tanks.  It was an incredible amount of work but with both of us working, we had it done after about 5 hours.  We then assembled and match drilled the ribs to the main and rear spars.

Pieces laid out.

The new die grinder to make deburring the wing ribs a little easier.

 Darren using the new die grinder on the ribs.

 Scott using the bench grinder to debur the edges.

 Things are looking ready for some assembly.

Hmmm.. That spar flange doesn't look quite right.... It should be a little more flush than that.... More on that later.

Left Wing Rear Spar Assembly

We spent some time on Friday night assembling the rear spar.  We riveted the stiffner plates and the spar doubler to the rear spar.  It wasn't a ton of work but we also worked on the attach brackets.

We took Saturday off as we went to the football game in Hamilton.  We had great seats in the first row and for those of you who watched the game we were right beside the TV cart when Eddie Davis got smacked into it.  I can't believe he got up after that hit.  It was an amazing game and the Riders won so it was a great day! 

The parts laid out for the evening's work. 

Scott squeezing some rivets. 

Darren taking a turn at sqeezing some rivets. 

A shot of the field at Ivor Wynne Statium.

We got to hear the Tigercat's Cheer.... Something like "Oscar-wee-wee, Oscar-wah-wah, Tigercats eat'em RAW!"  

Our Saskatchewan Roughriders out on the field. 

A parting shot of the Scoreboard... I know you cannot see it but it was a 33-28 win for the Riders.

For the record the Ti-cats fans were great, and Ivor Wynne ranks as the best place to watch a CFL game in Eastern Canada by a wide margin.   The stadium is in a sketchy looking neighbourhood, but the people, and game time environment make it a great place to take in a game.

Left Wing rear spar

Today we spent a few hours building the wing stand that we'll need to construct our wings.  Once that was done we spent the rest of the time preparing the rear spar.  We deburred all the edges, match drilled the stiffner plates and the spar doublers, countersunk any holes as necessary, removed material for the aileron push-rods and deburred all holes.  It was also necessary to dimple the spar where the doubler and stiffner plates will make access almost impossible.  Finally we prepped and primed all the parts. 

The lumber for the wing stand. 

 The pieces we will be using for the rear spar.

 Darren using a file to enlarge a hole for the aileron push-rod in the spar doubler.

 Spar doublers cleco'd into place.

The spar doublers primed and waiting for riveting to the rear spar.

Left wing tie down bracket

We manufactured the tie down bracket for the left wing (used when the airplane needs to be tied down outside).  After we cut the bracket to size (on the new bandsaw), we match drilled it to the spar.  We next connected and match drilled the platenuts, countersunk the rivet holes, deburred, prepped and primed the bracket.  Once that was done we attached the platenuts and then started over.  We learned that clecos are not the right way to align platenuts -- always use the screw or bolt!  

The plans for the attache bracket that we needed to build.

The tie-down bracket installed on the spar (note Darren's patriotic Canada shirt for Canada Day)

Platenuts, more platenuts and even more platenuts

Well, if the title didn't give it away we spent most of today installing platenuts on the left wing main spar.  Every platenut has 2 rivets which isn't really all that much but when you consider that we must do the following steps for every platenut:

- match drill the rivet holes (to get them to the correct diameter

- machine countersink the 2 rivet holes

- deburr all rivet holes

- spot prime where we countersank for the rivets

- rivet the platenut into place (2 rivets)

- countersink for the screw 

- spot prime the screw countersink 

It is actually a lot of work (we installed 76 platenuts today).

It was a little tedious but we completed the installation of all the platenuts and started working on the tie down bracket (used to tie the wings down to the ground when parked).  Before we quit for the day we layed out the part and tapped a 3/8x16x1" hole. 

Scott squeezing some platenuts. 

Darren squeezing some platenuts.

A sign we were not treating our hand squeezer as nice as we should have been. 

Scott match drilling. 

Scott squeezing some more platenuts.

A close-up of some platenuts from the back. 

A close-up of some platenuts from the front.

Scott measuring the piece of aluminium to be used for our tie down bracket.

 Scott tapping the tie down bracket.

Left Wing Main Spar

Tonight we started on the left wing.  You'll notice from the picture that the main spar is actually gold.  We decided that we wanted to fly in style so we chose the "gold upgrade". :-)  Seriously though, the spar is actually anodized (a chemical protection) so we don't have to prime it.  We only need to prime where we countersink. 

We match drilled the many many many platenuts that are used to install the fuel tank and then we countersunk all the rivet holes.  Finally we spot primed where we countersunk.  It doesn't seem like a lot of progress but it was a lot of work. 

Empennage completed

Today we finished up the remaining tasks on the empennage (at least those we can do prior to inspection).  We installed the trailing edge wedges by match drilling to the top elevator skin, through the wedge and into the bottom skin.  After that we deburred and dimpled the skins and machine countersunk the wedges.  We then prepped and primed the parts.  Finally we rolled the rudder leading edge.  We spent the remaining time cleaning and reorganizing the shop. 

We'll start on the wings on Tuesday. 

The left elevator layed out with the piece of "L" aluminum used to assist in drilling out the trailing edge.  

 Scott drilling out the trailing edge.

Darren deburring.