I'm catching up again on the previous months activities here.  I don't think I'll get over how much work gets done in retrospect vs. what is standing right in front of me.  I often feel like I'm making no progress whatsoever and then to have to journal about the progress - it's a good reminder to keep pressing forward.

The biggest highlight is obviously getting the fuselage on the wheels for the first time.  I still need to torque out the bolts on the wheels themselves so they hold air.  There's a gentle leak in the two mains but it's not enough to worry about at the moment.

I've had some challenges in retrofitting the Beringer wheels onto the Sling provided parts but those were overcome with consulting a few local folks with expertise in their respective areas.  The nose wheel was one of the more interesting ones in that the axel for the wheel wasn't going to work with the Sling supplied bolt.  This necessitated boring out the Beringer axel to allow for the mounting bolt to be inserted to actually mount the wheel.  The machine shop I tool the problem to was able to bore out the axel to within 1/1,000th of an inch and has a nice smooth insertion of the bolt with no wiggle whatsoever.  The bore removed a small amount of material and I believe it won't be a problem - ah the joys of an experimental airplane eh?  Let's hope I'm not wrong on this one.  

The wheels overall presented the bigger challenge, but through conversations with other folks who have crossed this challenge before I did I believe I have arrived in a good spot.

I also used my time this month to replace the incorrect wing hinge which was installed way back last fall.  It only took a few days to correct this problem and I can now safely say the wing is done with the aileron and flap for the right wing is complete.

The fuel tanks presented a whole new challenge.  The biggest hurdle was that I missed steps 5.- Cleco the back channel, and 6. - Remove the fuel tank assembly from the wing and complete assembly.  Had I understood the weight of what I was doing a bit better I would have realized that when I assembled the rear portion of the fuel tank in the fuel tank jig I would have realized I wasn't aligning to the wing but to the jig - which wasn't square for the wing.  Because of this I introduced a twist to the fuel tank resulting in it completely not fitting.

To correct this it required removing all the rivets holding the back portion of the fuel tank, gently prying off the rear portion of the fuel tank, cleaning all of that up and then reassembling it correctly.  As of right now I have one of the two fuel tanks completely done, tested and mounted to the wing with rivets.  I gotta say - following the instructions would have been a HUGE game changer because the whole thing went together easy-peasy the second time.  In speaking with Evan about this he said by about the second set of wings you get good at them.  I just didn't realize I was going to get to do that on my first plane.  Lessons learned - let's try to stay away from doing that again now shall we?

Another fun challenge to overcome was to have the brake selector mount re-engineered to have a better mount than the two mounts provided from Sling.  Someone someday is going to have to explain to me how Sling ships a brake valve they know doesn't fit to the right angle adapter.  The options to resolve this is to re-thread the valve (not my first choice) or buy a new valve that does fit.  So I opted for the new valve - but it didn't fit well with the mount Sling provided.  A buddy at work is really into 3D printing, so I took the problem to him and he spent a day modeling up and printing a mount that fit perfectly.  I am really happy with that arrangement and I really doubt it'll be a problem - ever.

Mounting the engine mount to the front of the plane involved getting the nose wheel yoke working smoothly.  This was a task in and of itself because the only way to really test it was to assemble the entire setup, test and then back it out if it didn't fit well. It's hard to do this because I want to use bigger more powerful tools to move faster.  The problem with that route is if you take too much material off then you're in a worse spot than if you don't take enough off.  But I do think I struck the right balance in this case.

The next few weeks I have a couple of vacations coming up which will impede my progress for the rest of the month of October - but I think the avionics will be the next thing to go in after the heater.  We'll see.  I do spend a fair amount of time testing fitting stuff and then seeing what goes in next before I make something permanent.  

It never gets old.  A couple of weeks go by and it doesn't feel like I've made much progress and I come back to look at these pictures and video and I see how far I've come.  

At this time the right wing has the wingtip removed and when the hinge comes in I'll be ready to swap that out.  The workbench is quickly not being able to support the fuselage, so it'll go on the mains here soon.  That will be quite the milestone to reach.

In looking at some of the pictures here the wiring isn't in the final location after making a couple of test runs on the install.

My nephew Nathan and my father-in-law Harold were over again to help with the build.  Having the extra hands has been super helpful.  As the weather gets warmer I should have the garage door open a bit more and it will be more pleasant to work in the garage.  

Today I took delivery of the finishing kit... but I moved that straight into storage as I don't have the room to get into that right now, but I do need to get the inventory done on it to make sure it lines up with everything they indicated shipped.

At this time the only things needing to be delivered will be the avionics, the interior kit and the engine... I gotta get back out into the garage and keep going!  :D

Good news!  Good News!  A torque tube has arrived.  And yes, I needed two of them.  At the time of this writing I needed two torque tubes and have one in hand!  That's progress for sure.

Since I was finishing up the fuel senders in the last video I spent the time waiting on the tubes to get a few more items off the checklist.  It's kinda funny.  The previous video and post make it seems like very little was accomplished the past few weeks, but what it feels like is far more was done.  After putting the empennage to bed at my father-in-laws house I pulled out the rear fuselage material to start assembling those parts.  Overall the ribs aren't too bad to put together.  The main trick is getting the parts all lined up correctly.  I talk about this a little bit in the video.  Effectively the parts are all designed to go together in EXACTLY the right way.  If you don't put them together correctly, they don't fit.  So it's a good feeling when things don't appear to be fitting well together and all the sudden everything clicks together.

After a week I got the Rear Fuselage ribs together, the torque tube arrived and I needed to get the fuel tanks tested and wrapped up.  Even though I genuinely thought the tanks were good I took the extra step to test the tanks with water.  I'm really glad I did - not only did they leak, but they REALLY leaked.  Where they were leaking would have been a major pain to resolve if the backs were on, so chalk this one up to being prudent and checking at each phase of things.

I got the tanks re-sealed in the areas where they were seeping out water and did another re-test.  A few ones that didn't appear the first time appeared, so I adjusted again.  The third test was the trick.  Everything seems good to go from the front of the fuel tank.  So I worked on attaching the rear portion of the fuel tank.  I ran a little short of the pro seal, so I've got another tube on order and will crack that open when I'm ready to wrap up the second tank at which time I'll have plenty of pro seal to go around.

Once the tanks were squared away and the rear fuselage ribs were stowed I got the left wing out of storage to wrap up the ribs with the torque tube.  This phase all went together quite smoothly.  At this time the back skins are riveted on.  The next steps I will be taking is working on getting the electronics installed, the pitot tube installed and mount the necessary electronics inside.  I was going to build some mount points out of spare aluminum, however I changed my mind at the last minute to use the ClickBond material which I used a bit in the vertical stabilizer.  Their product works really well.  It's quite permanent, or as permanent as the airplane is going to be, but it is expensive.  

During the week this week I'll fiddle about with the electrical work and getting going on the pitot until I get the last toque tube, pro seal and ClickBond materials - hopefully by this weekend.  I have the last week of the year off from work.  I am hoping I can still get all the control surfaces together here before the end of the year and move onto the fuselage.  Obviously it take as long as it takes, but with due diligence it's coming together quite nicely.  

As I mentioned in the previous post I have the firewall forward kit on the way, the finishing kit not the way, the interior on order/on the way, the instrument panel order in (which basically means I'm in queue to get built) and the engine on order.  I have the prop already here.  So a number of very major items are all in play at the moment.  If the fuselage goes together as quickly as I expect it to, I may actually be stuck on waiting for the engine/instrument panels, but that's how the ball bounces here.  The good news is I think everything but figuring out the paint scheme is settled or in progress at the moment.

Anyway - next update should be either the last week in December or first week in January.

I'm catching up on some of the past work with this post as the video was done a about a week ago (yeah past-date availability on blog postings!!)

The later half of October we got moving on the fuel tanks.  There aren't many stages of this project that I somewhat dread, but the fuel tanks were definitely one of them.  In following the videos from Sling (youtube.com/playlist?list=PLQcGDbAAIZb00QsNn6om0xTirTiVaLn3h) put out through Evan Brunye who finished his sling earlier this year.  His hints, tips and suggestions make a lot of the prep work and assembly go so much smoother.  Quite often I just sit down, watch and re-watch the given task video I'm working on so I know the steps well.  Then leveraging the documentation in the build kit and then the online updated PDF's from the Sling Factory.

The assembly of the fuel tanks is a big messy project - or at least it can be.  I didn't find it too bad as it was an "all hands on deck" day with myself, Laurie, her dad Harold and then recently joined by my nephew Nathan for the second tank.  

We could only go as far as assembling the lower section of the tank as I'm going to go with a non-stock fuel sender.  For those of you who aren't familiar with what a fuel sender is (which I can't say I was until a few years ago), it effectively is the device which sits in your fuel tank with a float and tells you how much gas is in the tank.  So why go with a non-stock (and thus added extra cost) fuel sender?  Well, when I was a partner in the T210 we put in a whole new modern panel which required upgrades to the fuel senders as well.  Cies makes a fuel sender which is very modern and provides accuracy to within 1/10th of a gallon of gas in the tank.  To read more about the differences, check out their site at ciescorp.net/documentation/comparative-fuel-sensor-technology/. 

This is the nice part about building an experimental kit in that I can upgrade where it makes sense in the process.  I have a few other upgrades planned, but this is the first one where I am deviating from the basic plans - and it makes sense.  I think it's rather important to know how much gas is in the tank.  Although I have to say, my general rule/habit of flying is to always land with an hour of fuel left in the tank.  Given the SlingTsi burns around 8gph, that's not a lot of fuel to be sensed.

The other part of the build that I'm kind of amazed by is how fast it's going together.  Granted building an airplane is an exercise in you're 90% of the way done with 90% more to go, but the timeline in my head didn't fit it was going to be at this stage by now.  I'm waiting on some parts for the wings still and have been assured by TAF in Torrence and Sling proper in South Africa that the parts have been shipped.  They aren't coming by boat, but by air.  By air doesn't mean a direct flight from SA to CA, but it does go cargo.  So it may make a few stops in-between.  I probably have about a months worth of work to do on the wings to get them wrapped up.  The next few days are going to be spent finishing up the other control surfaces I have left to work on and the ones I can work on.  If we don't have any new parts before then, it'll be time to crack open the main fuselage box and get working on that.

The other news that has evolved the later half of October is the finishing kit has shipped as well.  Now I'm nowhere near ready for that to arrive yet, but it's good to know it's "expected" arrival is the first week in December.  Given they have a bunch of cargo ships sitting off the coast of LA waiting to be unloaded, even if it takes an extra month I'll still be in fine shape.

Before the end of the year I expect to pull the trigger on getting the engine and avionics ordered.  Timing is definitely the bigger challenge on this project as with the upset delivery schedules around the globe and manufacturing bottlenecks it's tough to gage when things may arrive.  Sadly, engine and avionics warranties start when they are bought, not when they go into service.  So even though I may have an expected tight timeline on this project, it could be six months before either the engine or avionics get turned on after they are received - and that is even i I take them out of the box and install them on the day they arrive.  That wouldn't be the case.  It's more likely the materials would arrive and they get worked into the build cycle somewhere.  Possibly a few weeks or months.  The idea is to just minimize the exposure to the warranty slowly drifting away.

Anyway - the next video likely will be a few minor parts being tidied up and the fuselage start to take shape.  let me know if you have any questions.