It's Fintastic!!

Got a package from Lockwood on Friday.   It had my new bumper , lower ribs, and the piece I needed for the aft fuselage.  So we trial fitted the bumper and the fit was good.

We stuck the nose cowling on for looks.

Moving on to the tail.  The plans show the tail fin fairing going on with rivnuts.  I'm not a big fan of them, they can loosen with age and then you are hosed.  I  decided to trial fit the fairing to see if a proper nutplate can installed now.

While the photo shows a large gap it is easily taken up with a little hand pressure.  I have to do this now as there is no access to the middle section due to solid bulkheads.  Didn't do this yet put that is the plan.  The vertical stabilizer is HUGE on the AirCam.

Saturday morning was also leftover pizza snack time.

Nothing like a little Bat's Brew on cold pizza!

We pressed on Saturday fitting the bumper up and doing some interior drilling.

Had lunch at Ma's Hot Dog House.  Check out the toilet paper dispenser.

One final shot of the bumper assembly all finished for now.

Bleriot was quiet all day.  Not sure she is feeling well.

Back at it all day today.  BTW, Tosca was great!  Not sure I'm winning over Myron to opera yet.  Next week it is Nixon In China.  Even I may have to switch over to You Bet Your Garden instead.

Deja Vu

Well you have seen these before.  Put the skins back so we could drill out the temporary rivets in the sides.

Tomorrow night we will do the bottom (picture above), and it will be pizza night so that Don and Myron can keep working while we drill.  After this we start taking it back apart

No picture of Bleriot last night to which I was admonished so here she is with her face in some Tuna Delight

That's all for now, good night!!

Whoa There Big Fella!

Got the other rudder scupper on tonight.

Then I drilled out all of the temporary rivets from the top rails and popped them off.

The next step is to remove the center cargo floor but then I realized I was getting ahead of myself.  I still have a lot of temporary rivets in the side skins and bottom.  The structure is loosing its rigidity as we take it apart.  So its back on with the top rails and skins with a few clecos and drill out the remaining temp rivets.  Saving that for tomorrow night and probably into Friday.  Meantime - de holes need to be de-burred.  Don dropped in and grabbed his trusty offset deburring tool.  I have three more of these on order so I'll mark one with his name.

Emailed George at Lockwood today and some of my backordered parts should be on their way.

Wet Evenings Work

It is soaking wet here now, typical for this time of year.  The runway is to soft to use, especially for the RV since it has small tires.  So that means lots of time to work on the 'Cam.

Here are a couple of shots of the shear clip that was so hard to get too Monday night.

The one underneath was a booger.

Got the top rail drilled.

I think it is ready to come off.

And I attached the right hand rudder cable guide.

Still waiting for my back ordered parts from Lockwood.  Bleriot is getting impatient about this.

Coming Down

After Saturday's session of putting everything together, it's time now to start taking everything apart.

So we started with this

And now we have this

And we have to go over every hole of every part to take the burrs off.  So we start with the skins

Tonight I spent 2 hours to drill 20 holes.  These were a real pain to get to.  Besides the clip you can see here, there is one underneath the longerons too.  The clip is the small piece on top of the longeron and the bulkhead just below the red LO.

All of this under the watchful eye of Bleriot

The Illusion Of Progress

Got a lot done this week but of course when you are making big holes out of small ones it doesn't look like it.  So this week I put the two halves together to see what was going on at the overlap joint.  This had been done at the factory but not all holes were done to size.  I had extra help yesterday so I took advantage of it. We struggled a little to get it to go together but with the help of some shims it worked.  We had to turn everything around to fit it in the shop.  Together like this it is about 22 ft long.

Here it is from the front

And from the tail

Besides Don and Myron (above) Rose came down from Cary to help yesterday.

So we drilled all of the holes to size including the splice plate.  Then it was back apart.

I still have a few details to work on before disassembly can begin.  Plus I am still waiting on some back ordered parts from Lockwood.  George said they were shipped a week go but I'm not so sure.

Bleriot likes it when we work all day because the shop is warm.  Yesterday was very cold, it never reached 36 degrees.

A Few Details

Continue to drill holes to size and worked on a few details.

Skin overlap requiring specific hole sizes

Elevator Bracket

Diagonal braces.  These required a little work to fit right.

The gang boss.

Hope my cleco order shows up soon.

Betty Meets Bleriot

On Saturday we had an EAA Chapter 1423 meeting so I did not get started until a little after one o'clock.  I turned the radio on just in time for the drinking song from La Traviata from the Met.  I always did my best building on Saturday afternoons listening to the opera.

Betty and Cliff Evans dropped in and Betty met "first hand" Bleriot.

Yes, the little furrball drew a little blood from Betty but later they made up.

As far as AirCam progress, I continue to drill holes and add Clecos.  I got 300 more 1/8s from George since my order for 400 is still in Atlanta due to bad weather there backing up UPS.  I think I will need them all before this is over.  Here I have added the 1/8s in the stepped up holes before pulling the 3/32s out.  The pneumatic Cleco tool is a dream compared to conventional Cleco pliers.

I have pulled all of the 3/32s on the bottom now and have sized those holes.  Only the temporary rivets need to be drilled now.

More of the same today.

Drill Baby, Drill!

Probably drilled 600-700 yesterday.  Don and Myron came by about 9 and we got a production line going.  We finished oversizing all of the holes on the front half.

Then we took a break

Then we started drilling the #40 size through on the rear half.  This is the rear half laying on the left side.  The topside has 140 clecos so you can figure there were twice that many holes drilled.  This plus the opposite side plus the ones on 2/3s of the top = a lot of holes.

It was cold and windy on Sunday, but Bleriot found that if she sat up on the scaffolding it was warmer.