Day 40 - October 20, 2012

TeenFlight 2 has been working for forty Saturdays.  At ~ six hours per session times ~ ten builders = ~2400 man-hours of build time (plus weeknight sessions).  WOW!! That is a lot of time invested on this project in just over a year.

Anyway, when we arrived at the hangar on Saturday, we were greeted (not unexpectedly) by an exhaust manifold, some miscellaneous parts, and a long box that said Sensenich on it.  Around 11:30am Mr. VanGrunsven pulled up outside of the hangar with this in the back of his pickup.

That's right! a brand-new Rotax 912uls 100hp aircraft engine.  The excitement was humming.

After un-crating it, we set it on the table and let it sit while we worked on finishing up other projects.  It would make a lovely (and very expensive) coffee table decoration.

We finished the fiberglass lay-ups and applied the second coat of micro-balloon filler.  Then after lunch we peeled it off the airplane and got to work with the trimming.

After the main trimming, we did some on-plane trimming to trim away the glass that interfered with any other part of the plane during its opening rotation.  To avoid cutting more than just the intended glass, we slid a piece of tungsten behind the glass as a trim plate.  As you can imagine, when the die-grinder cut through the glass and hit the tungsten, there was a pretty cool pyrotechnic show.

The oil door was riveted to the upper half of the cowling with some very flush rivets.

As part of the firewall-forward kit, the cabin heat door was clecoed to the firewall.

Here is the hollow composite prop that will eventually be chopping the air at the front of the plane. 

  

Day 39 - October 13, 2012

Arguably the most difficult part of the entire RV-12 build, the fiberglass lay-up around the canopy is unlike the other parts of the RV.  Instead of manhandling metal into submission, this careful procedure requires concentration and patience. 

After completing the right side of this section on Tuesday, we finished the left side and center lay-ups.

A camera crew from the Port of Portland came out to photograph us while we were working.

Another item of interest are the wingtip light fairings that were permanently adhered to the wingtip with Proseal and rivets.

 Engine and avionics soon!  More next week.

Day 37 & Day 38 - September 29 & October 6, 2012

Sorry for not posting an update last week, I felt that we did not make enough progress to warrant a blog post.

Day 37:

Our second week back from summer break, the mentors were very surprised when only two students showed up. This limited our progress a little, but we still were able to progress on the canopy.

 

 

 

 Day#38: 



 

 There was more of a student turn-out for today.  Six students came to work for six hours on the airplane.

 

The holes in the lower cowling were drilled and the rivets squeezed to hold the hinge in place on the cowling.

What!! Missing rivets! But I checked that twice!  Yep, sixteen missing rivets were found in the vertical stabilizer.  This was fixed immediatly.

 

 

The big news is that the canopy is screwed to the canopy frame and the skirts are riveted to the canopy frame.  After letting the epoxy cure all week on the pink foam, we sanded the foam to fit the contour of the forward fuselage.  The fiberglass cloth is cut and we are waiting until next session to begin the lay-up process.