Flying and building on the farm

What an adventure Sun N Fun turned out to be. Epic camping, fantastic neighbors, hiding from weather, and a bona fide emergency with fire trucks and everything. It was a tiring and wild ride, and I’m already itching to go back again!

Spork and I had plans to take off on Wednesday to go to Sun N Fun. We’d already cleared our plans with the Mrs, and she said as long as we didn’t miss math class, and Spork did his math work while we were gone, that it was ok to play hooky from everything else.

. 

I was sitting at the church, waiting on Spork to get out of school like it was the last day of school before summer break. Bags were packed, the plane was loaded, flight plan filed, all I needed was for Spork to escape so we could hit the road. I especially wanted to get away because we were threading the needle with our trip down. The air show started about the time I was picking Spork up. It was a 3.5 hour flight down, and the field would open after the airshow at 5pm. It would then close again that evening for the night airshow so we only had a limited window to get to Lakeland and get on the ground.

During the first hour, departures are released only. Just like people have to get off the elevator before you can get on, planes on the ground need to leave before the new planes can start coming in. When the departures are cleared to start leaving, it looks an awful lot like this. 

At airshows, the normal rules of traffic separation are waived by the FAA. I’m not talking about the rules for aerobatic airplanes, I mean the rules for regular people like us. Planes are taking off on the runway and the taxiway right beside it. They are side by side, and there are multiple planes on the same runway at the same time. There could be two planes pulling onto the runway, two midfield taking off, and two just a few hundred feet off the departure end, all at the same time. It is incredibly busy.

Since we are an arrival, we are told to hold at Lake Parker, which is the initial point for the special airshow arrival procedure.

We are planning on arriving at 5:45 with plans to start landing planes at 6pm, the expected one hour delay while all the bees leave the hive.

At about 5:10 we are talking to Tampa approach and they tell us that Lakeland will be closed till 5:30 instead of the expected 5pm. We are only a few minutes away from Lakeland, and we have already been in the air for about 3.5 hours (headwinds). We are planning on holding for about 15-30 minutes then landing at Sun N Fun. This all works fine, because we have about 5 hours of fuel on board. But if we now have to hold an extra 30 minutes, we are starting to get close to needing fuel as well as a bathroom. Things get busy as we start planning alternates and we pull the power back to really slow (90 knots vs 155). No sense rushing to get there just to hold. Of course we tell Tampa what we are doing.

But no sooner than we settle down on our now snails pace of 90 knots, than departures start coming out of Lakeland. Almost the first one heads straight for us, as I see on the ADS-B screen. Tampa gives us a vector but the best avoidance technique is to speed back up and give a slight turn. So much for going slow. Tampa gives us another vector for more traffic, then a few minutes later gives us a warning that he won’t be able to vector us around all this traffic, there is simply too much. He then says something I’ve never heard from a controller, “Put your head on a swivel, and good luck. Frequency change approved.” I can actually hear the tension in his voice. Gulp.

We head off to the East at 3500 feet, well above the Lake Parker holding altitude of 1200 feet. As we overfly Lake Parker I can see a few airplanes in the hold. I can also see airplanes everywhere departing. It is like standing just over a beehive. I pull the power and we descend into the Lake Parker hold. With a few adjustments we fit right in and settle down for our expected half hour plus hold. As we are making our second lap around Lake Parker, starting to settle in, the controller calls, “T tail over the power plant rock your wings!”

What have I done wrong? I just got here? I give a good rock and he comes back, “T tail, you are number 1 for the arrival. The airport just opened. Proceed Westbound and follow the procedure.” Wait, what?

He then starts machine gunning instructions to the following aircraft while we are suddenly thrust into the visual to Lakeland via the special procedure which involves turning left at a golf course, flying past a cake tower, and overflying a blue building. It sounds cheesy but it actually works very well. I’d already gone on Google Earth to try and pick out these landmarks. Thankfully they are much easier to find in real life than they are on the internet.

As we make our turn Southbound at the golf course, we are supposed to switch over to tower. We switch off a machine gunning controller and onto an eerily quiet tower frequency. We’ve not been able to pick up the ATIS because when we tried earlier all it said was the airport was closed. No weather information was given. We weren’t in the hold long enough to pick it up again and frankly we were staying busy looking out for aircraft. Now we are number one leading a bunch of airplanes into Lakeland and we aren’t talking to anyone.  At least I don’t have a J3 cub going 40 mph in front of me. I power back up and get back to a normal approach speed for our plane.

Finally after checking the frequency I call tower for a radio check. The controller comes back immediately, loud and clear.

As we get to the airport, the controller calls, “T tail approaching Lakeland, turn your downwind now!”

Downwind would imply I knew where the wind was coming from. I wasn’t able to get the ATIS. I’m not supposed to answer the controllers, only rock my wings. However I don’t know which way to turn. I key up the mike, “T tail doesn’t have the winds, am I turning left or right?”

“Right turn T tail, start your turn now.”

I pull the plane around into a quick right turn.

“Good turn T tail! Keep going. I want you to aim for the green dot and land on the orange dot.”

I pull around into a quick turn to take us to the green dot. There is no rocking of wings at this point I realize, only quick compliance to demonstrate that you heard and will obey. Each move is made with a touch of gusto to show I’ve heard him.

“Good turn T tail, keep it coming. Ok, now put it down on or after the orange dot. Welcome to Sun N Fun!”

The controller is done with me, and is machine gunning instructions to the airplanes behind me. We are down and safe at Sun N Fun!

As I touch down, I realize this was actually really fun. Not the sedate square patterns I normally fly, but an arching, descending, snappy turning approach to a narrow taxiway with everyone watching and airplanes everywhere. And I got a number of attaboys from the controller to boot. We’ve made it!

But as they say, getting there is only half the fun. More to come in part 2.

Not published on the blog, that’s not exactly an accomplishment since I pay for the hosting, am my own editor, and write all the content. No I was published on Air Facts Journal, which has been in publication since 1938!

Now in all honesty they produce their content these days by having folks like me submit content to go along with their mainstay writers. But a story from my flying days past made the cut and I’m internet famous!

Well, sorta.

Here is my article.

The second week was different right from the start. The first thing Mr. Rob had us doing was covering, which is a simple process. First, apply many coats of glue to wherever the fabric is going to touch on your piece, second, lay your piece on a large rectangle of fabric then trace and cut. The last step, ironing is both the worst step and the best step. Let me explain, when you iron this special fabric, it shrinks. Now, believe me, I love it when a plan comes  together. Shrinking the top and bottom of the elevator/aileron/tail feather/wing is immensely rewarding and one of the funniest things to do while building an airplane. However, shrinking the sides of the fabric, the part touching the tube and glue, might be the worst step of building the airplane. you have to fix all the mistakes you made while applying the fabric. All in all, covering is an enjoyable rung in the ladder that makes up building an airplane. As long as you have a nice breeze to let out the noxious fumes the glue pervades.

After covering a few plane parts, me and Mr. Rob built the flaps and the ailerons. This was very enjoyable because I was able to listen to Mr. Rob, who had done everything under the sun and stares, singing along to James Taylor’s songs. Like I stated in my previous post, Mr. Rob was a great host and always kept us entertained.  But I digress, the flaps, which are eight feet long, have two hundred ninety four rivets each. The only crummy part about the flaps and ailerons was deburring . The process is as follows, put the pieces together( a little less than twenty pieces for the flaps and around fifteen for the ailerons). Cleco half of the predrilled holes with small clecos. Then, drill the other half of the holes. Afterwards, put the big clecos in the holes you just drilled. Next, unclico the small clicos and drill their holes. Then, take everything apart and debur all two hundred ninety four rivet holes. You can then put every thing back together for the last time, yay, because, the next step is to put a few clecos in and rivet the flap pieces into one piece. For those of you who don’t know, a cleco is a small cylinderesk tool that is used as a non permanent way to put soothing in a hole to keep two or more pieces together. To say the least, my clecoing and unclecoing speed drastically improved from the first day to the last. Even though I was faster than before, Mr. Rob, who was building his sixth Just SuperSTOL, smoked me every time there was a contest.

 

In looking up some other information I came across this review of the SuperSTOL that I thought was better than average. Somehow I didn’t see it before when I was doing research so I wanted to save it, and post it, for people who may be interested in the SuperSTOL.

At least the last day in Grantsboro. There are plenty more work days to come.

Friday was moving day for me. I got up and started immediately on packing and wrapping parts for the ride home. My intention all along was to take everything home with me today but pretty much everybody who came by implored me to either:

1. Leave the plane in Grantsboro and work on it there.
2. Leave the wings in Grantsboro and come back and work on them there
3. Leave the wings in Grantsboro and make a return trip to get just them.

I wasn’t going to do option 1. Two and 1/2 hours back forth each time would mean that I’d never get to work on the plane. I don’t have blocks of time that big. I get a few hours here, a couple there.

Option 2 was the same issue.

Option 3 was an option, but only if I couldn’t safely get everything in the trailer. According to my tape measure, everything would fit. Unfortunately we wouldn’t know till it was time to leave and everything was getting packed.

While I was bubble wrapping, taping, going out and buying more tape, and doing more wrapping, Robby and Spork were knocking out the ailerons. The thought was that I wouldn’t need to buy a rivet gun if they could get them built before I left using Robby’s awesome air rivet gun. 

We also needed to cover an aileron because they are just like the wing and we were not going to be covering the wings before I left. This made for a mini project I could use for reference. 

Unlike the tail feathers, the ailerons and the wings use special rivets to hold the fabric in place. Part of getting the fabric ready is to take a butane powered soldering iron and burn the holes for the rivets. Then you apply the anti-chafe tape, burn a hold in it to match the existing holes, then you install the rivets, then apply fabric tape over that. This aileron was done quickly by Spork and Robby  while I was packing the airplane away so I didn’t get as much hands on as I would have liked. Fortunately Spork was all over this one and he absorbed the process fairly well.

As we were working in the hanger, we heard a plane approaching. It was Jenny on her way to work in Manteo. Instead of the horrible turbulence and headwinds she had the evening before, she had severe clear and a smooth ride on the way back.

We had two visits from our technical advisor while we were in Granstboro. One when we first started, and one on our last day. Since he also owns a restaurant that was only minutes away, we had our lunch on Friday at his place. We received the full behind the scenes tour, including the ribs that were in the smoker for dinner that night. I was ready to get home, but I wish I’d stayed to have some of his ribs.

With lunch over and the ailerons done, it was time to get serious about moving out. We hauled the wings out into the trailer and fortunately they did indeed fit. With the wings and fuselage loaded, it was time to start fitting all the bits and bobs in the trailer. This was the scary part as nothing could contact anything else. Parts are very delicate and one minor ding could mean days of work.

We had a mile of rope, straps, ratchets, and bungie cords securing everything in place. It couldn’t be tied too tightly because that would damage the part. It couldn’t be loose or things would wobble around and rub on each other or the trailer. The answer was a web of straps and lines securing in all directions for each part, plus a couple of miles of packing tape.

Getting everything done required Spork and I both, with me inside snaking my way up, over, under and around trying to route all the lines. A huge thank you to Miguel who cleaned this cattle trailer out extra well. Otherwise I’d have been crawling through poop.

Robby came up with a tool list for me of things that I needed to order when I got home. It was surprisingly short. Unfortunately some items are not listed on Aircraft Spruce’s website. Dog bone?

We’ll need to build our own paint booth at some point in this build. Painting is apparently about 30% of the build, not counting building the paint booth. Who knew paint was so involved?

When we stopped working about 4pm, I asked Robby where we were in the build. I’d been told it took 1000 hours to build this airplane. We’d now spent about 100 hours on the plane, which is 10%. But it was actually 100 hours x 3 so we’d be 30% done. Robby said that the wings, which I’d ordered pre-built, along with the work that we’d done, accounted for about 60% of the total build. I was very pleased to hear we’d gotten that much done over our two weeks. There isn’t a lot of mechanical work left to do on the airplane. There aren’t that many parts left in raw form. We will be moving onto covering not too long after Sun N Fun 2018. And Spork and I have the summer carved out to work on the plane as much as possible. There is a 5 month lead time on the engine, so I’ll be looking at engines at Sun N Fun as well. Then we need to start installing avionics, painting, etc. Once those things start happening, we have an airplane! But first, we had to get home.

After starting full time on packing at 4pm, we were finally loaded (I’d already been loading off and on during the day) at 7:15pm. Spork and I took off just before dark and headed West to Garner. I was pretty concerned that I would have an issue on the way home and stopped a couple of times to check on things,  but when I arrived I only had one piece that had moved and the packing material had kept it from getting any damage. We were home safe. Success!!

We parked at the front door and called it a night. N41RW was home. Tomorrow we’d put it in the barn.

Day four saw us start with a renewed vigor. There was no longer time to start new projects. And some of the items we’d started were not going to be able to be finished in the time we had left.

The first thing I wanted to do was to get the airplane onto my stands. It was really easy to do and nothing went wrong, but I was concerned that we might try to mount them last minute only to find something was amiss and there was no time to fix it before we left. That would be a serious problem since the plane had to ride home on these stands. As I said, it ended up being no problem and everything fit up perfectly.

It is hard to see in this pic, so I’ve drawn in some arrows. Normally this side of the airplane is enclosed in fabric and inaccessible. However Robby had been putting baggage doors in because it saved you from having to crawl over the seats to access the rear baggage area. Despite the planes small size, the baggage area is pretty generous. Reaching the back of it from the cockpit would be a challenge. With this baggage door, it is simply.

This door however is the first piece of custom work I was doing to the plane. Luckily Robby had a mockup of a door he’d done previously so between his mockup and my existing frame, I was able to make up a frame fairly easily. Well, after I designed it wrong and Robby stopped me so I did it correctly.

The door frame was made by welding up 90 degree unions from 4130 steel from our door kit. I’d done those over the weekend. Then I cut aluminum tubing into sections and mocked it up. Once it looked like a good fit, I mixed up some Hysol and went to work.

I was unfamiliar with Hysol prior to starting this build. I’d used plenty of 5 minute epoxy, JB weld, and Acraglas before. Mainly Acraglas because I use it when I’m gunsmithing. Hysol is another epoxy and it looks and works similar to JB Weld, but is has the work time of Acraglas. And it is an interesting work time too. At first it is a thick paste, pretty gooey. But as it starts to set over the first 30 minutes, it becomes more like clay or fondant. Once that starts happening, you can wet your fingers with alcohol and start working it with your hands, shaping it and smoothing it. Once you get a feel for it, it makes for pretty easy and good looking work.

The door is Hysoled in place, aligning with the existing frame.

Here you can see the inside view. The gray goopy stuff is the Hysol holding the door frame in place. Once it sets up, it is like concrete.

Once we finished up for the day, Spork and I once again headed out for dinner. But this time Jenny and Robby were meeting us at their favorite place in New Bern, Persimmons Waterfront Restaurant. Spork and I got there early as Jenny was flying back from Manteo and Robby was driving to New Bern to pick her up at the airport.

There was some concern because Jenny was bucking major headwinds and turbulence that was “the worst she’d ever seen.” Considering she is an aerobatic instructor pilot, when she said she was scared my heart rate went right up. Fortunately she made it safely and we worked to have a drink waiting on her.

No not this one. Spork and I sat at the bar where we ran into a waiter from 247 Craven we’d met he night before. Now I really was starting to feel like a local. There was a very nice young bartender behind the bar and again nobody in the place. The bartender was using her time to concoct new drinks. What you see above is version 3.2 of a poison apple. I don’t remember what was in it and I didn’t try it (it has caramel on the rim, no sugar for me). But Spork and I had a large time being part of the creative process. We talked to the other staff, compared notes and flavor profiles, talked about what this drink we pair well with, and worked on specific gravities of the different ingredients trying to get the correct look.

There was a lot of science ongoing at the bar, and Spork and I were able to bring a lot of school topics into the discussion. All while not actually drinking a drop.

Jenny and Robby eventually arrived and we had a stellar meal and a great time with Jenny and Robby at Persimmons. It may be my new favorite place and definitely somewhere I’ll take SWMBO if she comes down with me.

Day three was a busy day. Spork and Robby worked hard to get the flaps finished while I worked on seat belts, the lockable tail wheel and its cable, and finishing the dorsal stringer.

They had to redo one of the flaps because a part was installed upside down. This meant they actually built three flaps instead of just two. When Spork and I took our EAA workshop to try all four build methods, wood, fabric, composite, and metal, his least favorite method of construction was metal. Oops. I kept reminding him that at least here he was only building a couple of flaps vs the entire airplane.

Needless to say, he was glad the flaps were finished.

I asked him later if he still didn’t like metal building as much. His answer was interesting. When we were in Oshkosh at the workshop, he really didn’t like the cleco pliers. They were hard to manipulate in his smaller hands and that was the main driver of him not liking metal work. He didn’t share that detail before, so all I knew was he didn’t like metal.

But he’s literally grown a foot since Oshkosh. He has a man’s hands now, and the grip strength to go along with it. After working on the flaps, he said that he didn’t love metal, but it was surprisingly easy for him now. So note to self, if you kid or wife isn’t in love with helping on the airplane, it could simply be that the pliers are too big for him/her.

One of the things I changed on my build was I substituted the standard tail wheel for this beefy one that was lockable. The machining on it was a thing a beauty and now I can lock the tail wheel for cross wind landings. According to Robby, I’ll use it a couple of time and then never use it again. He’s probably right (he usually is) but as a low time tail wheel pilot I just felt better knowing I could lock the tail wheel. It should help with cross wind parking and taxing too and it didn’t add much weight. Plus it looks sexy, so there is that.

After getting the tail wheel mocked up, I mounted the lock handle in the cockpit. This took more time than it should because the factory sent me the tail wheel kit for the SuperSTOL XL, not my regular SuperSTOL. This meant I has several extra feet of cable. That would mean I could move the handle pretty much anywhere I wanted to, necessitating a lot of fit up, discussion, pondering, etc. After all that, I ended up putting it exactly where the factory said to anyway.

The black writing on below the red tail wheel handle is a mockup of where the fuel shutoff will be.

We were Robby’s seventh Just Aircraft build. However his first build was performed with the help of an aviation legend, John Stanley. John was kind enough to come by several times while we were in Grantsboro and even went to lunch with us and bought us pizza one day. He was a humble and generous soul and a prince of a man.

John soloed his first airplane in September of 1966 and graduated the Air Force flight academy in May of 67. He served in Vietnam, and then later left the military to become a contractor. He flew with Aero Services based out of JNX, who was my neighbor at JNX for 20 years. John spent a considerable amount of time overseas flying on missions he still cannot talk about. He flew these dangerous and secret missions until he was 72 years old! He then decided to retire and while a bit lost from all the sudden free time, he decided to help a young guy build a kit plane. That was Robby and his first airplane build.

On this day, John stopped by and asked me if he could give Spork something. He pulled out his wings from his military flight suit. I was shocked and honored. John wanted to pass his wings along to another aviator, which Spork intends to be. I assured John that when Spork earned his private pilot certificate, that I’d pin the wings on myself. What an honor!

We gave our thanks to John and said goodbye, then it was back to work. I needed to cut and remake the cable for the tail wheel, which basically involved taking the entire cable apart, measuring it, marking it, measuring it again, and then cutting it hopefully not too short! I managed to get it together with barely enough length. With that, the tail wheel was installed! At least for now.

I needed Banner occupied while I was on my back. And Spork needed a break. Both puppy and boy were glad to play with each other for a while so it was a win-win.

With the tail wheel done, I moved onto the seat belt attach points. There are cables that are made up from provided hardware and wrapped around a cross member in the cockpit. Robby offered that I could do a single attach point and basically just use the cross member itself but I thought I’d go with the factory recommendation since seat belts are about safety and all.

It took a while to make up all the cables, assemble the hardware, etc. It also took a bit of trimming of the floor pan, removing the seats, etc. Between the seat belts and the tailwheel, I pretty much used up my day.

When running the cable for the tail wheel, Robby showed me a trick using tie wraps to make standoffs for the cable. It was simple, efficient, light, and cheap. It was also safe because it keeps the cable from rubbing and maybe wearing through.

These tie wraps come from Lowes and have steel reinforcement making them very strong and safe.

At some point I need to build a hanger door for when we finish the airplane. I wasn’t sure if I liked Robby’s design or not. I mean, I like it. I’m not sure if it’s what I want for my door though. I think I may build a bifold door instead. Regardless, I needed pics of the design.

Robby recommended this book to me. It is a condensed version of the FAA’s rules on how to do pretty much everything to an airplane. How much overlap does the leading edge of a fabric panel need to have? There is a rule for that and a requirement. Safety wire required? Find out here. How to cut a hole in the panel? Yep, all the things you need to know, and the proper and improper way to do it are contained. I have a copy on order.

We called it a day, cleaned up, and Spork and I headed out to dinner.

I made a point to take Spork out to dinner each night that I could. We used to travel to New Bern quite a bit because my buddy had a boat there. Spork and I have  few favorite hangouts we wanted to hit again and we were making our rounds hitting them all over the course of our two weeks in town.

On night three or four out on the town our bartender said hello to us, again. Turns out she’d worked at the previous night’s stop, MJ’s Raw Bar. This night she was at 247 Craven, another one of our favorite places. At this point, I was starting to feel like a local. We were half way through week two and now we were starting to know people and be a tiny part of the community.

This night at 247 Craven was uncharacteristically slow so we had a good opportunity to talk to both Kristen our new favorite bar tender, and Dillon pictured above.

Kristen, besides being a fantastic bartender, it turns out is related to a famous aviator. Dillon was on standby for OCS school with the Navy. He was waiting on a pilots slot and was waiting tables to make ends meet. Dillon also cannot swim, something that I was incredulous about since he was talking about joining the Navy!

So between Kristen and Dillon, we had lots of aviation talk and some awesome food. Spending time with these fine folks was an perfect cap to our great day.

 

Day 3 dawned cold and snowy. I traded snow pics back and forth with The Princess at home. She was highly disappointed there was no snow for sledding. I was glad we had sleeping bags, and LP heat in the cabin.

Day three was flap day. There was a big effort to put the flaps together and get all that riveting done. This was done by Robby and Spork, with me only taking pictures. In fact, looking back now I’m not sure what I did on day three. Thank goodness I took notes!

Day three saw me installing the tail wheel and it’s locking cable. I’d originally ordered the non-locking standard tail wheel but when I was at the factory I saw the upgraded tailwheel and decided I had to have one. It is a beefy, shiny, awesome looking tailwheel and it was totally worth the upgrade price. Unfortunately the cable they sent was for the SuperSTOL XL instead of the regular SuperSTOL. Oh well, I guess I can add cable splicing to my list of things I know how to do.

Not to be outdone with my sailing injury I brought home from the Bahamas, Spork managed to cut himself while working on the flaps. I gave him all the sympathy you’d expect out of a bunch of guys, which is less than none. There was some mockery or his life threatening injury, of which he was the instigator. Then work resumed.

Apparently I also worked on the stingers more on day three. Specifically the one that is on the bottom of the airplane. The ventral stringer, maybe? This one was a piece of cake. It only attached at the front end. The back end was basically free and terminated behind the baggage compartment. No crazy shaping. No need to match top to bottom. All I needed to do was to do exactly what I’d done on the other stringers, drilling, shaping, etc. But in addition I had to put a small bend at the free end of the stringer. Easy.

“So Robby, how do you bend this tube?”

“I just bent it on the bench by hand.”

Sounds easy enough. I’d rather use a vise so I can put the bend just where it needs to be and have some control but Robby did it, I can too. That should have been a clue I was doomed.

I got everything ready, holes drilled, spacing correct, etc. Even as easy as it was, we are talking about several hours of work at this point. Then I took the stringer over to the bench and carefully put a bend in it, at exactly the wrong angle!! I didn’t realize it had rolled on me slightly while I was holding it. Of course, in the vise I wouldn’t have done that but I was trying to be one of the cool kids and do it by hand.

Maybe I can bend it back and get the angle correct? After a bit of futzing around, I broke the piece. Argh!!

Robby calmed me down and showed me how to splice the pieces back together. That involved making a splice from some scrap tube, then using Hysol and rivets to put the pieces together, which meant leaving the whole thing to dry overnight.

With the flaps basically done (except Robby’s was upside down. Oops! Score one for Spork), and my spliced stringer glued up and drying, it was time to call it a night.

We thought we’d leave Sunday afternoon to return to Grantsboro, but in the end, with all that we had to do before we could leave, we ended up leaving early Monday morning. Driving straight through, we arrived just before 8am, and within 20 seconds of Robby. Pretty good timing.

I didn’t mention that the previous week we had a bit of excitement. I had to run to the hardware store to grab some supplies. When I went to leave, I met a volunteer fireman who had the road blocked. He told me that I had to turn around and go the other way. Complying, I turned around and headed back down the two lane road, past the hanger, and then into another road block. I asked if I left, would I be allowed to come back through the road block to get back home. There was much confusion over this question, but eventually, after much debate I received the official verdict.

“Um, maybe.”

I went to the hardware store but told Robby via text that I may not make it back. Driving through the back country to circle around, I found every road blocked and volunteer fireman and even younger kids blocking roads. Whatever it was, they were serious. Eventually I made my way back in through the road block and work resumed.

We really didn’t know what happened till the next day when a neighbor stopped by and told us there had been a murder. This was maybe 1/4 mile from where the hanger was. When we had lunch this week, I saw this in the local paper.

Apparently she’d had enough of the old guy. Word was she was a bit different anyway, but who knows. It is not like we haven’t dealt with dead bodies before. Anyway, mystery solved, we went to work.

One of my first tasks was to bend the elevator push rod. That is the black rod you see in the above picture. It is what controls the up and down  of the airplane, as in pull back = houses get smaller. Push forward = houses get bigger. It is a major control. Bending a control rod may seem like a bad idea, but all we are doing is introducing a few degrees of custom bend into the push rod so it doesn’t rub and runs true. It is actually difficult to see the bend in the pictures.

If these bends aren’t put in there, the push rod still works just fine. The problem is it rubs ever so slightly on the baggage floor. No sense rubbing the paint off or introducing extra friction into what you hope is a smooth control surface run.

With the controls running free, and some clean up of tools, rivets, trash, etc completed, it was time to start learning how to cover.

All the fabric for the entire airplane comes in one roll. It really isn’t that heavy, but once all the glue is applied, then the primer, paint, another coat of paint, decals, etc, this ends up being a significant portion of the overall weight of the airplane. It is also a large part of the structure, very similar to how the skin is our largest and most important organ. The fabric is very important to the airplane.

The glue that is used is pretty amazing. You mix it with acetone to thin it to the desired consistency. Then you brush it on in relatively thin coats. Above you see a grey part and on the tube closest to the camera you see it barely tinted green. This is after a couple of coats.

Now you see the glue applied at a correct consistency. It is technical, tedious, and demanding. It is also color coded and basically arts and crafts. Glue till it is green enough, then move on. And the materials, while important, are not individually that expensive. If you mess up, get some more and do it again.

But as I was saying, the glue. You paint on a bit of this glue and work around the part in a circle. When you get back to where you started, the glue has already dried so you can keep right on going. Once it is thick enough, you trim some fabric material as you see here. This part is exacting not because you’ll crash if it is wrong, but because you want it to look good. Straight lines, clean cuts, etc. You put a bit of glue on the fabric, then start folding it over the glued up parts. Now remember, the glue has already dried, it actually dries in seconds. So how does it stick?

When you fold over the fabric, you apply a bit more thinned glue that soaks through the fabric. This is where the magic happens. The glue is thinned so much it is basically just acetone. Acetone reactivates the glue, through the fabric. It immediately becomes sticky again and then you adhere the fabric to the now sticky glue. Give it 15 seconds, and it is dry again. Don’t like it? Peel it off, reapply and do it again.

What is your work time for this glue? How long will the glue reactivate with acetone? Robby was at the stage in the picture above one time, stopped working on the plane and went to Alaska for the summer, came home, and went straight back to work. The glue sat patiently waiting and only needed a bit of acetone to reactivate.

So you use the cool glue to basically wrap your part like a Christmas present. Trim the corners, make the folds, get the lines straight, etc. With everything wrapped, and glued you end up with a part that looks sorta decent, but has floppy fabric sorta hanging loose. That is when you introduce the best part, the iron.

You see, the fabric material shrinks with heat. You have three settings on your iron for three different passes you make shrinking the material, but no pass is as fun as the first one. At this point, you’ve been working for half of a day on one part, like what is pictured above. When you pass that iron over the big sections, the fabric draws drumhead tight almost instantly, and you can finally see what all the work was for. You also iron out wrinkles, bubbles, etc so there is some fussiness at this point too. The amazing glue also reactivates with heat so if you have an area giving you trouble, you give it a bit of extra heat and work it out to look perfect.

It takes about one full day to cover a part like one of the ones you see us working on. That is one person, one day, after you know what you are doing. At the stage above, we are only about 1/2 done with covering. We still need to put on the tapes that protect wear areas, the edges, etc. Then later we’ll have to cut access holes for inspections, but mostly they are in the wing and the fuselage. You start with the tail feathers, the pieces that we were working on. Eventually you move to the fuselage, the main body of the airplane. I’m told the tail feathers take longer than the fuselage. If that is the case, we’ll go from naked metal frame to covered airplane in a day. That will be an epic day. But we’ll hold off on that for some time because once the fabric is applied, it gets much harder to get access to all the parts we are working on.

The pieces we are covering here are the blue surfaces on the back of this airplane.

And here you can see the fabric and how it covers the fuselage. The airplane is basically a big steel 4130 box frame, wrapped in a tight covering and painted. It is fragile to being poked, but very strong in the air.

In case you are wondering if this flimsy construction style is strong enough, or safe enough. The control surfaces of World War II aircraft were built the same way. They seemed to be strong enough to do the job.

The way our two week event worked was we worked from 7:30am on Monday till 5ish pm on Friday. Then we rushed home, got in after dark, showered and went to bed, and then tried to get a weeks worth of stuff done during the time between Saturday morning when we awoke till we were scheduled to leave Sunday afternoon. This included our farm chores, Spork’s school work, my taxes, and homework Robby sent home with me. I didn’t have time to take pics of most of what I did, but the one thing I remembered to do was take pics of our new airplane holders.

During the week, Jenny had gone to Greenville and picked up two engine stands for us from Harbor Freight. Robby was using the exact same ones so copying the design and changes was easy enough.

Of course, I didn’t actually measure anything. That would be too easy. This is the tail stand off. It is 92% of a Dan Hand long, a critical dimension.

The engine stands have to be modified to work with the airplane. Nothing dramatic, just cut off the riser and add in some steel to make the nose stand higher. This allows the plane to sit level.

There was no intention of ever using these stands to hold heavy weights again so no enginerding was needed. Just grab some scrap pieces and weld them in well enough to hold a couple hundred pounds. No problem.

Except I hadn’t welded up the standoffs at this point. The brackets you see attached to the face plate are the ones that came with the stand. I cut 26″ lengths of 1″ box tube and attached them to the existing standoffs with a good bit of welding.

The tail stand was much easier to weld up. Just cut 99% of the steel so that the box section is bendable to stand plumb instead of leaning backwards as it does out of the box. Then weld up the cut to the new plumb position. This one just took a few minutes, which was awesome because I still had a ton to do and not enough time to do it.

Besides packing, taxes, etc, I also had to weld 90 degree brackets for the door I would be making for the cargo area on the airplane. The four brackets were made of 4130 steel like the rest of the fuselage. I had about 15 minutes for the entire project, including cutting the steel, jigging it up, and figuring out how to weld thin wall 4130. The welds were pretty ugly but they worked for the application. Thank God they were buried under epoxy when the door frame was assembled. I couldn’t have lived with those welds showing on the finished airplane. They would hold fine, but they were ugly.

With entire seconds to spare, we got everything loaded and were ready to leave. Ready to start week number 2.