Catch-up Blog

We're still doing miscellaneous things, because of the gas tank messs. We borrowed a cable tensiometer and adjusted the cables to the rear stabilator. We painted some more parts of the interior, and started to put in some of the panels in the rear area where the gas tank will go and the luggage compartment. THEN we discovered that somehow or another we forgot to put in about 8 nutplates, but we figured how to put them by guiding wire through the holes and pulling up the nutplate through the hole where the nutplates go. We need to order some more blind rivets to finish it.
We also fitted the wings, finally, and that took longer than we anticipated but it will be easier next time; if you deburr the inside of the tubes, the bushings will fit much better. We also put the brakes on.
We're going to start working on the canopy tomorrow.

"Bit-and-Pieces"construction

Well, it's been awhile since we've made any posts but we haven't done anything in sequence, primarily because we've been waiting on parts for the fuel tank. We requested some cap nuts twice, and both times they sent us the wrong nuts, but the third time was the charm. We are now at the point where we recently installed the landing gear spars, and had a pretty difficult time of it. Either the rivets were installed improperly or we just didn't have the skills to get the bracket for the gear installed. One of the pictures of the undercarriage shows the area where the strut fits, and the rivets that kept the bracket from fitting. We snipped the rivets that were there and then put in rivets from this side. I don't know if WE put in the rivets from the wrong side or Vans put them in, anyway, we couldn't fit the bracket that secured the struts without replacing the rivets.
Today, we took the 'whale' off its side and put it on the ground with her new 'legs' installed. I think we're ready to start making the zoom-zoom noises...
I over-torqued one of the bolts that holds on the bracket so we had to order another one from Spruce Aircraft in Peachtree City.