KitLog Pro - Recent Activity

After several weeks of work on the shop, tools, waiting for shipments to arrive, and a few practice projects, today marks the start of work on the actual airplane! I began by laying out all the pieces of the vertical stab (except the skin) on the workbench. Unfortunately, some of the parts that are backorderd from Van's are necessary to complete the vertical stab. My empennage kit didn't include Bag 1001, which contains VS-1010-PC, VS-1011-PC, and VS-1012-PC. That prevents me from getting very far today.

I accomplished all of Section 6 Step 1 and started Step 2. After marking the cut lines on VS-1014-R and VS-1014-L with a steel ruler, I used the band saw to cut the rear spar caps and then deburred the cut edges with a scotchbrite wheel. Step 2 of the plans calls for clamping the spar caps into the VS-1003 rear spar and match-drilling the web holes with a 1/8" drill. The holes will be final drilled (reamed) in a subsequent step to #30, but the plans call for the rudder hinge brackets (VS-1010, VS-1011, and VS-1012, which I don't have) to be clekoed into place first. I stopped after clamping VS-1014-R to the spar since I didn't actually have a 1/8" drill bit among my build tools. I had plenty of #30s, but those are bigger than 1/8” and I figured there must be a reason the plans don’t call for the holes to be drilled to final size just yet. I’ve remedied the situation easy enough, but I should have paid closer attention when I was reading the plans over the last few weeks. I think I assumed everything would be drilled with a numbered bit. Now I know.

Overall kind of a frustrating first day of work. I didn't have all the airplane parts I needed or the drill bit I needed, despite having spent several weeks and several thousand dollars getting ready! I still think I'll really enjoy this, just an annoyance when I was looking forward to gettting the project started. And I'll be busy doing my real job for the next two days, so the project will have to wait :(