Sunday, November 8, 2009

Building an airplane: it ain't all sexy

There's a lot of grunt work that comes with building an airplane. For every session pulling rivets with the awesomely powerful and inarguably sexy pneumatic rivet puller, there are hours of menial effort in deburring, fitting, test assembly, test finished de-clecoing, and cleaning up the resultant mess.

Last night I spent a few hours deburring the major components of the stabilator.

This morning, I enjoyed a few hours outside in the glorious Native American (nee Indian) summer we're having. What was I doing out there? Well, finally cutting up the crate of certified insect-free lumber that the tail kit arrived in.

Finally, a chance to use my saws-all! Or, as I like to call it, the bone saw. Because make no mistake, this saw doesn't care whether or not what you put in front of it is wood, metal, skin, or bone. It will saw through it! As an exercise, count how many safety infractions and/or imminent personal disasters you can find in this picture:



Brave Sir Hogarth, true to his ironically given nickname, was keeping a safe (and sane) distance from the events:



He ain't the bravest pup of the litter, but he ain't all that stupid either.

I'm wearing just the right shoes, though. I only buy them for the name:



Miraculously, I still have all my digits! Or, more importantly, I can still count to 20 if I need to:



Using the same level of foresight that has gotten me where I am today, I have the wood all loaded up to haul off to.... well, I have no idea at all where I'm going to haul it off to. That's TBD.



For the rest of the day the plan is to fly the RV-6 a little bit, if only to get the oil warm enough to drain out for the last oil change of the year.

3 comments:

Ageless Stranger said...

Dave,
didn't know Vans did shoes... Are they good for flying? My Redwing work boots seem to be too heavy/large to fly the Citabria. I wore tennis shoes for the second lesson and it went better.

Hugo said...

Dave, as long as you can still count to 21 (think about that one for a second or two) you're doing all right.

Years ago, I sold Sawzalls in California, for an industrial supply house. At that time, they had to be registered as "burglary tools" since they could create an instant "door" anywhere on a house. Be safe.

DaveG said...

I don't think Van's Aircraft is in any way associated with Vans Shoes, but the logos look so similar that I just can't resist them.

I bought them for pretty similar reasons to yours: I was struggling with the rudder dance during takeoffs and landings when I was first learning to fly the RV-6 and I thought that consistently wearing the same pair of shoes might help. I don't know if it helped or not, but now I'm hooked on Vans shoes.

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