The weekend, an interlude

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.

Engine stand from Harbor Freight
Engine stand from Harbor Freight

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.

High tech measurements of the engine stand standoffs
High tech measurements of the engine stand standoffs

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.

Beginning to weld up the stand for the nose of the aircraft
Beginning to weld up the stand for the nose of the aircraft

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.

Reattaching the upper portion
Reattaching the upper portion

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.

Finished conversion to airplane stand
The finished product

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.

Modifying the tail stand
Modifying the tail stand

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.

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