April 2010 Archives

Yesterday I continued with the training kit. First I dimpled the skins with the C-frame and riveted the stiffeners to the skins, then I match-drilled, deburred and riveted the spar to the ribs:

This is how it looked after match-drilling the spar and the ribs to the skins:

Then I drilled the trailing edge:

Finally everything was deburred and dimpled. I still need to countersink the trailing edge wedge and to dimple the wholes that are closest to the end of the ribs, since I couldn't reach them with a normal dimple die or even with the vice-grip style dimpler. So I will need to make a female dimple die from some piece of flat steel.

Before I went to Berlin I already practised riveting with some spare aluminium pieces. Today I started the aileron training kit: I cut and deburred the stiffeners, deburred the spar and the ribs, matchdrilled the stiffeners to the skins, deburred the holes, and dimpled the stiffeners:

Dimpling the skins and riveting the stiffeners to the skins needs to wait until tomorrow, as it's too noisy for the neighbours.

Last week I've been to a meeting in Berlin. My outbound journey was on 16 April -- one day after the UK airspace closed for IFR and the day when the German airports closed due to the ash cloud coming from Eyjafjallajökull's eruption. It took me a mere 24 hours pure travel time from Durham to Berlin: train, bus, ferry, taxi, hitchhike, train, taxi, train. I wished I had already finished the plane that I haven't really started yet: With the RV-8 it would have been a short hop, VFR below the ash cloud. Well, one more motivation to build ...

Last weekend I drove to Axminster and bought even more tools. Now I am the proud owner of a drill press, a bench grinder, a disk/belt sander, a vise, and some additional small stuff. That should round off the tools I need to really get going ...

... if there wasn't the bit with the paperwork. On the long run, I want to move back to Germany, so it would be good to have a German registration on the plane. That means that I have to build the plane under German rules, and indeed I found out that this is possible! Now it's "just" a matter of finding a technical inspector who is willing to travel to the UK just to have a look at some parts before I close them. Oh well.

After coming back from holiday I finished the anti-noise enclosure for my compressor and made a muffler for the intake (shamelessly copied from a tip on VAF). The neighbours say that they can't hear the compressor running. I guess time will tell if they were just polite or really don't hear anything. Anyhow, it is a huge improvement for the workshop and makes using the compressor pleasant.

The enclosure standing on its side. Air is blown into the box and directed to the motor and compressor block. The box is made from 18mm MDF.

The interior of the enclosure is padded with felt blankets. I found the idea for the muffler on VAF and it works great. On the left you can see the 135 cfm fan I installed for cooling.

The front cover is removable.

Right now the filter/regulator is still fixed to my kitchen table.

It's been a while now since my last entry, as I haven't been home a lot in March. The month started with a work trip to Switzerland, but a fair fraction was flying my glider from a frozen lake in northern Sweden. Every year in March there is a wave camp in a small place called Ottsjö, and this was my second time there. We had a really good time! Here are some impressions: