Day 15 - February 22, 2014

It's amazing to see how much progress has occurred within two weeks worth of build sessions. The students are flying through the plans.

The exciting event of the day was attaching the skins onto the left wing assembly. Everyone was elated to see the wing take its form. Team Green spent the session performing the incredibly fragile task of riveting the skin pieces. It was important for the members to avoid making any profound marks upon the surface, for aesthetics as well as corrosion protection.

Team Red began work on the flaperon assemblies, helping with the left and right skin preparation, as well as some match-drilling for the brackets and main spar.

 

Both the Purple and Blue teams worked on detailed upper fuselage sections. Blue members assisted with the preparatory work for the control system components while the Purple members continued attaching the firewall assembly along with the instrument panel base assembly.

 

Day 14 - February 15, 2014

As a result of an unexpected arctic blast of snow and ice, last week's session was canceled. This in turn, left the students plenty of work for this Saturday's session.

At last another kit had arrived at the hangar this week: the finish kit. So for the first half of class, Team Blue helped inventory the pieces. The Blue members were also assigned the delicate task of preparing the wing skins. These pieces required extreme care in handling, so deburring them became a meticulous, prolonged task.

The Red and Green Teams worked together on constructing the skeleton of the left wing, this included attaching the main and nose wing ribs to the main spar, as well as attaching the rear spar and stub spar assembly. A couple of the members helped assemble and install the stall warning system upon the left wing. The system is a safety feature which alerts the pilot of a potential stall, where the wing's angle of attack becomes so steep it loses lift.

Team Purple helped attach the upper firewall assembly to the fuselage structure, and finished installing the components of the fuel line system. They also spent the day creating and applying tank sealant to all the edges, corners, rivets, and joints, to prevent fuel leakage.

Day 13 - February 1, 2014

Today's session started with a mini introductory course on tubing. The students were taught how to properly bend, cut, and flare tubes, then given some practice on scrap pieces.

Team Green started and finished constructing the rear wing spars. The assembly took much of the day, with much deburring, drilling, dimpling, and riveting involved.

Team Blue and Red worked together to finish riveting the side skins on the fuselage and then onto wing rib preparation. The members ended up deburring and fluting over 50 rib pieces, a tedious process but well-worth the effort.

Team Purple started creating and constructing the tubes for the fuelline system. They had to hand-cut, bend, and flare each tube before linking them together with fittings. At the end of the session, they were able to fasten the gascolator, fuel flow meter, and fuel pump within the fuselage. The gascolator acts as a filter to separate and remove water along with any sediments that may collect in the fuel system.