Note: This post is almost a month late! Finally have some time to catch up on posts!
First the boring (but necessary) stuff. I finally got back to the frustrating firewall rivet tasks. In the previous session I drilled out a bunch of rivets and let it be. Today I went back and repaired as many of those rivets as I could. There were some that still were exceedingly challenging and decided to wait until I could get a second pair of hands to do those. All in all, it was good to get back to what felt like actual progress! Nothing major to report except that my expectations were set more correctly this time around, and when I did get a bad rivet I simply took a deep breath, drilled it out, and tried again.
Next up I added the nutplates called out on the firewall. Some I had to back rivet… some I could squeeze. I cannot stress enough how much more I prefer the squeezer. I have recommitted to using the squeezer as much as possible. even if it means a bit of creativity to get it to work.
After enough repair work (and as far as I thought I could take it), I decided to have some fun and unbox the propellor (Hartzell 96″ Carbon Raptor). It is surprisingly light! I had a vision of hanging it on the wall to act as a motivator to complete the airframe. The engine is coming later in the year, and there is still a LOT to do!! While Nico worked on his 3D printing projects, James and I devised a mechanism that was simple, and allowed easy mounting and unmounting as needed.
Next few sessions I will be wrapping up the forward floor assembly and then moving on to the landing gear box assemblies. Until then…. Happy Building!
2 comments
Woah is that a Long EZ in the background? This one doesn’t have a bubble canopy, so is that a custom version? Looks so incredible!
Hey Adam! That’s a Velocity XL-RG. It’s a big brother to the long ez but not a Burt Rutan design. Great commuter plane for my gig down in LA.