Category: Fuselage

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...

Over the weekend I started preparing the port-side outer fuselage skin for installation. There are a few steps to do before installing it: Lightly abrade the skin near rivet locations (for better paint adhesion under the countersunk rivet head) Dimple the forward rivet locations Attach NACA duct Roll edges...

On Monday I began the installation of the skins on the port side of the the fuselage. Like on the starboard side, I started with the interior skins. I found that the holes along the bottom of the skin were drilled differently than the starboard side, and supporting installing...

Today I worked on the nose gear a bit as well as continuing to rivet on the fuselage side skin. A recent Kitplanes article recommended using JB Weld with rivnuts, so I did exactly that for the towbar brackets that attach to the nose gear fork. In addition, I...