Pages 07-03 and 07-04 Rudder Finished

About another 2 hours on the builders Hobbs


Today my son and I finished the rudder.  Man that was cool to finish the second major piece of the tail kit.  I did have some issues with the length of some of those solid rivets.  They just seemed too long for the application.  In the end they squeezed fine.


Unfortunately I have a week off from building.  My wife and I are heading to London in the morning.  The anti-servo tabs will have to wait til we return.


On the flying front.. I have my check ride rescheduled for the week after I get back.  Hoping to be a sport pilot soon so I can get in lots of practice before the -12 is done.


Here is a not so good picture of the finished rudder.

Pages 07-02 and 07-03 Rudder Started and Test Fitted

About another 2 hours on the builders Hobbs

So finally back at it after being on travel for the past week.  It is great to get started on the second major piece of the tail.  The rudder seems like it is going together quickly.  I got the spar done and did the test fit on the vertical stab.  It would make more sense to me if they would specify more of what we are testing the fit for.  In any case it bolted up fine and also went the whole throw to the stops one the lower bracket so I am assuming we are good.  We ran out of light and I don't have a good enough light in the build area yet to work into the night.  I assume the neighbors probably wouldn't want to listen to the compressor if we had moved onto riveting together the rest of the rudder.

We will finish up the rudder tomorrow night.  I will post some pics then.

Tried to get in some flying again.  I flew twice in the past two days.  The weather just didn't cooperate though.  I was originally going to do my last flight to get in some shorts and softs before my check ride today.  In the end the winds just kept gusting and so I didn't get to get the flight in and postponed the check ride until about a week and a half from now provided I can get that one last flight in.  Fingers crossed.

Pages 06-06 and 06-07 Vertical Stabilizer Completed

About 8 more hours on the builders Hobbs

Well after a week away from things in Florida surviving the great tornado at Sun N Fun, I am back at it.  First off I have to say what an awesome time I had at Sun N Fun.  I was actually there and decided to bail out because of the weather the day the tornado hit.  The subsequent days however more than made up for it.  I got to see the Jabiru install in their RV-12.  Something very interesting.  I am still leaning towards the E-LSA factory Rotax from Van's but the Jabiru installation was interesting.  If they actually get the 120 HP model together it gets more interesting.  I was actually more interested in their instrument panel layout.  They replaced the factory fuses with traditional circuit breakers and the plastic factory switches with more traditional aircraft switches.


I also got to meet Van and got to see him just hanging out on the wing of Mitch's RV-12

My wife, son and I spent today getting the air compressor set up and in the meantime pulling a bunch of rivets on the way to finishing the vertical stab.  It was a real feeling of accomplishment to see the first piece of the kit assembled that actually looks like a part of an aircraft.  Now the pressure is on to finish as much of the empennage kit we can in the next few weeks.  Our wing kit is supposed to be here the week of the 9th of May and we are short on space in the garage.  I am exploring hangar options now.  I had hoped to hold off on the hangar for a bit but I think we may not have a choice.

Lastly an update on my adventure in getting my Sport Pilot cert.  So I tried to fly this weekend but the winds just didn't want to cooperate.  I also tried to take my written test on Saturday.  My luck continued :)  I showed up and we spent over an hour on the phone with tech support.  It turns out they were down nationwide most of Saturday morning.  I am going to do a pre-checkride tomorrow and a last ride with my instructor on Friday .. all being weather dependent.  If that all works I am going to try and do my check ride next Monday before heading off to London.