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Kupe's Zodiac 650B
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Date: 1-26-2013
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Number of Hours: 2.00
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Manual Reference: 6-T-1A, B, & C
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Brief Description: Spars and Ribs Pre-Assembly
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Went to my first Experimental Aircraft Association (EAA) local chapter meeting today. It's Chapter 186 at Manassas Airport (KHEF) and this year is their 50th year in existence. Looks like I got in with a great group of folks. They have regular monthly meetings, several events per year, and a membership of over 250 people. They have cheaply rentable hangar space for final assembly before the airworthiness inspection and a ton of "too-expensive-to-own-privately" items like a weight-and-balance scale set and a trailer big enought to haul most airplane bodies. Several of them have built or purchased Zenith Zodiacs - I definitely want to meet them.
After the meeting I was motivated to do some work, so I continued on the horizontal stabilizer. As I started reading through the Photo Assembly Guide to get my bearings, I noticed a significant difference between my guide instructions and the pieces delivered to me from Zenith - and it was a GOOD difference. It seems that every piece in the stabilizer skeleton (spars, ribs, doublers, spar attachments) were all pre-drilled. And not only were they pre-drilled, they were already drilled to the final size (i.e. beyond pilot hole, #40 drill bit size)! That saved me a couple of hours of lining up, clamping, and drilling.
All those pre-drilled holes didn't help me in figuring out front/back/top/bottom on the spars and even with the holes, it's not an idiot-proof assembly section. But eventually I got it sorted out by re-re-reading the plans and Assembly Guide, went back and removed all my incorrect and crossed-out sharpie annotations (furtively rubbing them off with paint thinner and a rag!) and pre-assembled 80% of the stabilizer skeleton. All that's left are 4 x 75mm "L" brackets I actually get to "fabricate" from a 4 foot-long piece of "L" bracket to attach the 2 tip ribs to the skeleton. Maybe tomorrow after flying.
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Front spar attachments cleco-fastened in place.
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Rear spar attachment, the one I spent a couple hours on two days ago, cleco-fastened in place.
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The core of the horizontal stabilizer skeleton minus two tip ribs.
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