Hardware Kits Arrive (Apr. 18th, 2002)

I was almost running short of raw material when the Wick's Sonex hardware kits finally arrived.

I had to fill in customs forms for almost an hour (however the customs officer was very helpful and showed where all of these reference numbers have to be filled into the form's fields. Statistically 40 kilograms of freight produce about a heap of two centimeters of papers.

Everything was nicely packed and there was no visible damage to the goods.

However the nicest part is unpacking the stuff. You see here plastic bags with bolts, nuts, washers, cotter-pins etc. This is what I love at the US of A: you can oder two washers for $0.02 each. This is absolute impossible East of the Big Pond. Here you have to order a 'packing unit' of at least 1000 peaces (even if all what you need are two of the critters).

At the first view it's almost unbelievable how many bolts and nuts will go into this aircraft - really impressive.

All Items were packed separately and each plastic bag was labelled properly.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

By a fortunate coincidence also the tail-tips arrived the same day - No these are NOT the Sonex fibreglass tips. This are Kristen Thorrud's homemade de-luxe carbon-fibre tips. He was so kind to mold me another set.

These ones are ~very~ lightweight and after some filling and sanding I'm sure will improve the tail section greatly.

Last WE I visited an aviation museum. Now I tend to use a color scheme like the 60's trainer planes. I tend to paint the tips and cowl nose in signal orange color and have a lot of yellow notes and hints allover the airframe.

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Alodining the big Pieces (Apr. 13th, 2002)

The sparcaps and main sparwebs are the largest pieces which receive a complete corrosion protection treatment (because corrosion between the spar-sandwich would be a nighmare).

This are the treatment baths (wooden frame nailed to tabletop and layed out with plastic foil) for the sparcaps. Isoprep is left and Iridite right. Having the two baths side by side is convenient in one way, however if some drops of Isoprep will spill into the Iridite then a chemical reaction starts which produces dark-blue 'clouds' in the iridite bath. The iridite's effectiveness will be compromized significantly by this reaction.

 

Coating the four sparcaps and three sparwebs consumed almost the whole saturday.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Glasscockpit (Apr. 11th, 2002)

What do you think about it?

completely steam-gauge free zone!

Navigation display, Primary flight display, Engine control display. Did I forget something?

...Yes, of course:

 

The instrumentation pack would nicely fit onto the panel-insert.

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More Preparation Work (Apr. 6th, 2002)

I couldn't finish priming all parts last Saturday. And because outside temperature dropped again to chilling 10 degrees C the last days I can't continue the paintwork at the moment. So I started again preparing the remaining aircraft components. The Sparcaps and sparwebs belong to the largest parts I'll give a complete corrosion treatement (wing and tailskins I'll give only a band of primer where the ribs meet the skin). The picture shows the grinding marks where I had to remove the stress-risers.

For Isoprep and Iridite treatement I'll build baths similar to the ones I used for the wingribs (wooden frame layed out with plastic foil).The bath's dimensions will be 10cm wide x 3 cm deep x 400 cm long (makes 12 ! litres each of content).

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Still more Priming (Apr. 4th, 2002)

Today I primed most of the wingribs and tailfaether parts (skins are still to go). The preparation for this hundreds of parts (above pictures shows only the larger parts, there are much more gussets, angles, etc) took almost three weeks. My usual process is

As you see above, I don't use the expensive Alumiprep/Alodine stuff anymore. Purchased instead the powder and mixed my treatment bath myself (10grams of Iridite powder to one liter of water). Cost is about one tenth of the ACS/Wicks stuff.

 

Q of the day: What do you think is the most difficult part of this work?

Spray-painting? - no, peace of cake when using the right equipment (HVLP spraygun)

A: it's the problem to keep track of how the parts fit together. All ribs, gussets, angle are already pilot-drilled and marked (e.g. rib #11 left). When I start for example cleaning a wingrib the information gets lost and because this is a hand-made airplane similar parts are not ~exactly~ the same. Once the correlation of small parts to big parts is lost there is almost no way to get the thing together again.

At the above picture the ribs are arranged in ascending order (rib # 6 to rib # 14). When the primer is dry I re-mark the ribs (if a gust won't blow the pieces around).