Germany I (Mar-Oct 2012)

I arrived in Germany in late July 2011.  I spent the first 5 weeks looking for a place to live and then was deployed shortly afterwards to Vicenza, Italy for another 5 weeks.  By the time I moved into my place in October 2011, the weather was getting much cooler and my garage was unheated and had no power.  So I decided to hold off on the build and enjoy the holidays build-free.

I shipped most of my shop to Germany thinking that I would add more weight to the project and to my return household goods shipment by building the airplane bits ‘n pieces (epoxy adds weight), and then getting rid of a bunch of shop stuff.  By ridding myself of all the shop table frames, foldaway glass-cutting table, raw particle board (for center section spar jig), etc., I hope it all would equalize out as a zero sum weight gain.  We’ll see!

I spent March & April 2012 prepping the garage and a utility room as the two primary workshops.  I had to outfit (read: buy) the shops with 220V lights and extension cords.  For the garage, I ran extensions cords from the back of the house and my front kitchen window.  Also, any specialized US-spec tool had to be run through a transformer… as you can see, a lot of plugging/unplugging just to finish the simplest tasks.  And since Germany is cold/cool most of the year, I had 2-3 heaters that I ran A LOT (electric bill was HIGH!).

In Germany I, the chapter build order does NOT follow the plans since I was prioritizing the build based on which sections would use the most epoxy (more on that in the posts).

• Feather Lite Order – Inventory

• Shop Preparation – “Chapter 3 Prep Round 2”

• Chapter 6 Part 2 – Fuselage Repair & Assembly

• Chapter 7 – Fuselage Exterior

• Chapter 8 – Rollover Structure & Seat Belts

• Section VI – Landing Brake

• Chapter 9 – Main Gear

• Chapter 16 & 24 – Covers, Fairings & Consoles

• Chapter 19 – Wings Build Prep

.                        Right Wing Build

.                        Left Wing Build

• Chapter 20 – Winglets

• Chapter 14 – Center Section Spar: Spar Box

.                        Center Section Spar: Shear Web & Spar Caps

.                        Center Section Spar: Final Steps

 

 

 

 

 

 

Recent Posts

Project Update

Hey Guys,

I’m happy to report that the install of all the internal CF baffles is complete, including the final gap fills around the edges to ensure minimal air leakage. 

As I’ve noted previously, all the exhaust pipes have been welded, with the required trimming of all the exhaust pipes to length coming soon.  I’ll caveat the exhaust pipe effort with the fact that I may need some welding on the ends of these pipes to get them pointed in the right direction, but I’m of course hoping not.  In addition, I have 2 compression style EGT probes from GRT on hand and will need to have the stainless steel threaded bungs welded to the exhaust pipes to mount those specific probes.

The convergence of a few intertwined components I spoke of before is STILL slowly coming to fruition, which will set me up to be nearly done with the entire engine install, sans the firewall (at this time).  With the CF inner baffles now installed, I can turn my focus on finalizing the aft lower side of the engine aluminum baffle install.  That will, in turn, allow me to identify where the bottom cowl cross rib baffle/stiffener needs to get glassed into place.

I’m still intent to focus solely on the plane for the next however long it takes to finish this bird… ASAP!  

  1. Chapter 3/22 – New backup EFIS/clock! Leave a reply
  2. Chapter 3 – Lathe CNC squawks Leave a reply
  3. Chapter 3/19/22 – Lights & Lathe Leave a reply
  4. Chapter 3/19/22 – The struggle is real! Leave a reply
  5. Chapter 3/19/22 – More Lathe Stuff Leave a reply
  6. Chapter 19/22 – Wing light brackets Leave a reply
  7. Chapter 3 – Lathe CNC spindle control Leave a reply
  8. Chapter 3 – Tooling up: Lathe CNC Leave a reply
  9. Chapter 3/23 – Dipstick cap & Lathe Leave a reply