Seems like it has been forever but I am finally back in the hangar, drilling holes and riveting metal. A bit of a late start to the season thanks to a great trip to Australia but here we go with Season 5. Many people have asked if this will be the final season and while it looks doable from here I can’t help think we might need a season 6. Anyway….
You may remember I am itching to put the wings on for their first installation but first I need to clean up the water oxidisation. I’ve started but it sure is a lot more hard work than I expected (or rather I am far more feeble than I realised) so I’m doing a bit at a time.
To get the horizontal stabiliser installed I needed to cut and drill new attachment brackets. I had forgotten about this until I found the new parts on the bench. With the stab clamped in place I put the brackets up to the mounts, drew where to cut it and then drilled it out to the pre-drilled holes.
The next step is to drill the bolt holes through the two attachment brackets and stab gusset in each of the four locations. For obvious reasons it is important to get this hole centred on the gusset. It is also important to get it level and centred on the fuselage.
At this point I decided to wait a bit, getting this hole wrong would sure be a disaster.
Something else that needs starting are the controls. I can’t start the controls without setting the position of the yoke which can’t be done without knowing where I’ll be sitting (so I can choose a comfortable setting). At this point I can’t remember if I have blogged about getting the official Zenith seat cushion set but I have and Teri and I put them the seats, placed it in the plane and (drum roll) I sat in the plane for the very first time!
We marked out the position of the seat on the seat base for both seats and removed the cushions. With both seats on the seat bases in the right position I drilled through the pre-drilled holes for the seat screws.
When I removed the seats to drill the hole to the proper size and found this
With the seat as far forward as I wanted it one of the holes went into the lightening hole so I picked a random place on the seat and drilled a new one. Each screw fixes into a nut plate so I laid out the nut plates at each hole, drilled and riveted the nut plates in place. With that done I could put the seats back into the plane, this time screwed to the fuselage.
Of course they are in the way for a lot of things so they will only stay in there until I have determined the location of the yoke and then they won’t come out until very close to the end.
Feels like a slow start, slower than previous years, but once the tail and wings are on, it is going to look great.
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