Open Hangar Day at the Carl's Airplane Factory AKA the Hangar

We had a really fun weekend this past weekend.  We hosted an open hangar at our place and invited in local flying and work friends.  Many of these folks say.. you are building your own plane... that is cool, that sounds hard.  It was a great chance to get them to see how it goes together and how both squeezing and pulling rivets works.

We had in friends from the flying club I belong to in Centennial CO, Skyraider Aviation.  They were great and flew down a couple of Gobosh 700's from the club.  I learned to fly and got my sport pilot cert in the Gobosh and love that plane.  It was cool seeing two of them in the parking area in front of the old FBO at Meadow Lake airport just outside Colorado Springs.

We had a great time showing folks the RV-12 and how complete the kit and plans are.  I even recruited some help squeezing some rivets in the initial build out of the wing kit.

My son and I also bolted together the majority of the tail control surfaces to the tail cone.  We still need to fabricate the antiservo tab servo and get it installed, as well as the fairings, but the tail kit is mostly finished.  See the pics below for an idea of where we are at and some cool shots of the Gobosh's at Meadow Lake.

Pages 10-05 through 10-10 Tail Cone Completed

About 25 more hours on the builders Hobbs

Wow it feels great to be finished with the tail.  It has been a challenge to get the time to get this completed.  My wife and kids helped out a great deal.  I am was surprised today for fathers day as they cleaned up the build space, built me out a peg board for my tools and framed the drawings of the plane.  It was a great surprise.  They then spent the whole afternoon helping to finish the tail cone.  My son did an awesome job riveting most of the tail cone together.  I worked on the squeezed rivet pieces and alternated playing cleco man with my wife and working on some pop riveting.

We had a minor issue with some missing bolts we needed to get re-ordered from Van's.  We also had some challenges getting washers into place between the stabilator and the rear bulkhead.  The other minor challenge is the static source.  It appears the one static source rivet just didn't expand enough on the back side to hold the tubing.  Luckily I had ordered a spare just in case we messed it up.  We will drill out that one tomorrow to put in the new one and hopefully have better luck with the setting of that one.

All in all, I am very impressed with the kit so far.  I am having an open hangar next Saturday and inviting friends, many of them pilots, over to help pull some rivets on the wing kit.  It should be a fun day, some good food and some help pulling rivets.

We passed a milestone of sorts today too.  We finished off the first box of 2500 pop rivets.  It seems incredible that we have used that many rivets already.  I am guessing the wing kit is going to take quite a few more to finish up.

Here are some pics of our tail cone construction.

Pages 10-01 Through 10-04 Tail Cone Assembly About Half Done

Another 10 hours on the builders Hobbs.

Wow we made some serious progress today on the tail cone.  I was feeling bad about not getting any building done in a couple weeks.  My son and wife really helped me today in making some  great progress.  My son worked on tapping the tie down bolt in area of the skid plate and then worked on getting the skins of the bottom half of the tail cone done.  My wife brought us out pizza for dinner and got recruited to help my son with the clecoing and riveting the skins on.  A bit of disappointment as we realized we were missing two bushings.  I am not sure if we managed to lose them in the move to the hangar or we just missed them in the initial inventory.

The only major issue on this work was the number of squeezed rivets.  My hands are killing me from squeezing them all.  Below are some pictures of the progress we made today.

My first real cross country.. or at least a try at it

So my wife and I really wanted to get out to Utah for a concert.  I thought what a great chance to actually fly somewhere.  It would only be about 450-500 miles each way.  We made our plans and headed to the airport early in the morning.  I got the weather brief and it sounded like as long as we got off the ground pretty quickly we were going to be ok.  We would be traveling up to Wyoming and going over along I-80 to avoid flying over the mountains.  We got off a little later than we wanted but the first leg of the trip up to Laramie WY was just smooth and really beautiful right after sunrise.  I had been told that the weather at Laramie, especially the winds could be an issue.  As it turns out the winds were calm and it was a decent landing.  We gassed up and got the weather for our next stop in Rawlins WY.  It sounded not too bad but we needed to get there and see how our next stop, Rock Springs was looking.  Rock Springs was just getting a little windy.  As we got about 20 mins out of Laramie we started hitting turbulence.  It steadily got worse and got beyond moderate turbs.  I decided that another 3 hours of that was not going to work for either myself or my wife.  We diverted back and landed at our home airport in Denver.  Even though we didn't make our destination or the show there, we had a great time just flying.  We ended up with a whopping 3.5.

Here is a shot at Laramie and the great FBO there, Cowboy Aviation.

My First Passenger

This is a little delayed as I actually had this flight a week ago, but I wanted to post it up here.  My first passenger was my wife.  It was awesome.  I flew the Gobosh down from Centennial in south Denver to Meadow Lake in Colorado Springs to pick her up.  It was a nice flying day but man was it windy at Meadow Lake.  It was a head wind but 25 knot gusts are 25 knots.  We got off and flew around south of Denver for a while before landing back at Centennial.  It was really cool to actually be the PIC with a passenger.  Here is a quick picture of my wife and I in the Gobosh.

Pages 09-06 through 09-09 Stabilator Completed

Another 15 hours on the builders Hobbs.

I am very happy to be finished with the stabilator.  It felt like a major accomplishment to finish my first large piece of the plane.  It certainly wasn't without some frustration.  It took considerably longer than I thought it would have.  I decided to hold off on putting the counter weight arm in until I get to final assembly of the empennage.  I will be moving the stabilator into my new hangar when I get back from travel next week.

Speaking of hangars.  Here is me in my new hangar over at Meadow Lake airport near Colorado Springs (KFLY).  This is where my -12 will be based and assembly will continue.

Pages 09-01 - 09-05 Stabilator Spar Box Completed

10 more hours on the builders Hobbs


Well as expected the stabilator has been more of a challenge than the previous parts.  The spar box has taken me longer than I had expected it would.  I guess it really is just more complex than the previous pieces.  If I don't see another nut plate I would be happy.  Hand squeezing some of these rivets is also a challenge.  The longer rivets in the counter balance arm flange was a serious challenge and I am using the Main Squeeze.  The nut plates are just a pain to me to get properly aligned and squeezed.  It got easier by the end.


I am hoping to get the rest of the stabilator finished tomorrow but we shall see.  I am really trying to get the empennage kit completed soon as I expect the wing kit this week or next and I am out of room.  I am hoping I can either store the finished pieces in various places in the house :)  or in a hangar if I can get that arranged this week.  I think I am at the point where I really need the hangar.