Step 1 Complete!

The first step was take the vertical stabilizer rear spar caps (VS-1014), and cut off a 16″ wedge of aluminum in order to make them into VS-1014-L and VS-1014-R.  I did this, deburred them, and also deburred the VS rear spar (VS-1003) as well.  It’s such a modest little first step.

Here is the right one done, with the left one untouched.IMG_2315

I never photographed the completed tables with the DRDT-2 mounted between them, so here’s that:IMG_2316

Both spar caps complete:IMG_2317

 

Berck: 2 hours.

A day spent on practice kits

Van’s offers two practice kits to exercise to help form the skills you need to build an airplane on something other than the airplane you want to build. One is a toolbox, the other is a small section of an aileron.

We started on the toolbox, first. Here’s a picture of the first pieces clekoed together:

IMG_2308

Shortly thereafter, we realized that we really needed our hand squeezer to dimple the flanges. We do have the DRDT-2, but our hand squeezer is backordered, and there’s no way to get the flangers into the DRDT2-2.  Frustrating.  We also discovered that the deburring tool we have doesn’t work on small drill holes, and the other deburring tool is also backordered.

So we started on the airfoil.  We were able to get reasonably far on it, before we realized we had the same problem.

IMG_2309

IMG_2313 IMG_2311 IMG_2310

 

Still, that was an entire day’s worth of work.  And we haven’t even started on the airplane!