Category: Fuselage

It’s a task I’ve put off for a long time, but I finally have a headliner attached to the canopy. I’m super pleased with the results. Although it wasn’t particularly difficult, it was manually-intensive, detailed work and took me most of the day Sunday to complete. First, I had...

Quite some time ago I decided to put in a headliner on the canopy, mostly for aesthetic reasons. The material I chose is a foam-backed suede material from Automotive Interiors and Accessories, Inc. This was one of the only vendors I could find that made any statement about flammability;...

Last week I finished the electronics design for the overhead console and sent off the PCB design for manufacture. I’ve already received the parts to stuff the boards, but the boards themselves will take another week. In the meantime, I decided to set up the canopy in my lab...

I’ve completed the preliminary design of my automatic heater system. I’ve been concentrating on this for the last few weeks, which is why I haven’t posted much progress on the plane itself. This system recovers the heat from the engine’s cylinder head water cooling loop, forces air over a...

Today I unpacked the composite canopy from the shipping crate that’s been sitting in the corner of my garage since the Spring. It took a good hour just to remove all of the protective bubble wrap, shrink wrap, and packing tape for transit. With some help, I placed the...

The next big step is to attach the canopy to the fuselage. For that task, I needed some supplies to seal the canopy. The factory recommends products made by Sika, which are a bit hard to find here in the US. I found that they are carried by some...

With everything attached for the front and main landing gear, and all of the fuselage riveted together, I decided it was time to drop the fuselage onto its wheels, and free up my workbench. I’ve been working on the fuselage for a little over a year now, so I...

I got a tip on my blog a few weeks ago from Daniel H. that I should have installed the static ports from inside the fuselage, not on the outside as I documented previously. The thought never occurred to me that they should be inside; the static port on...

On Sunday I finished riveting the port side fuselage skin, so now the fuselage is finally a structure that can carry some load. My next goal is to get the fuselage on wheels, so I started looking into the work required for the main landing gear assembly. The main...

I have friends over today for a summer BBQ so I decided to set up the plane for a little showcase. Some of the interior bits are installed, and I hastily attached the nose wheel (temporarily of course). I’m quite pleased with how the interior is looking, and very...