Chapter 23 – Clear Prop!

So today was PICTURE DAY! Remember getting all dressed up (or your parents mandating that you get all snazzed up) for school picture day?  Well, that’s what I did for the shop.  I started off by spending well over 2 hours doing some much-needed spring cleaning on the shop.

During my cleaning I took a few minutes to remove the ANL40 from the front side of the firewall in the hell hole and put it back upstairs and will install it later when I finish up the electrical components install in the nose.

I then temp-mounted the propellor with the crush plate just for picture day. I was pleased with the how prop fit and looked mounted on the back end.

I took a slew of pics of course.  I ended up posting shots of the fuselage at different angles.  Believe me, I chucked a ton of pics out!  The main shot I was after was a straight shot from the aft end with the prop and wheel pants installed.

Here’s an angled aft view.

With these pics captured, my main goal is to weld up the angle-iron mounts that will allow the engine-on-mount to get mounted to the engine stand.

Although very close to the one above, I included this shot since it’s positioned a bit nose higher.

Another shot from a high angle.  In addition to the shots I took, my neighbor came over and set up all his photo shoot equipment and took a ton of pics with his high-end digital camera.   When I get those pics I’ll most likely post them here on my blog.

I’ll note that I’m very pleased with the how the wheel pants install turned out.

Here we have a shot of the installed right wheel pant with the canopy mocked up in place.

After the prop and fuselage pics were all taken, I then spent a good bit of time setting up my TIG welding kit for a good bit of welding that I need to do.  It’s been so long since I’ve welded with this box that at first I thought it was in-op.  Since this welder does stick welding as well, the ground connection on the front of the box is for stick welding, and the ground lead for TIG is actually labeled with a “+” sign…. which I finally figured out after spending a good amount of time tearing it apart and going through all the troubleshooting guides.

Tomorrow my focus will all be on welding, specifically the angle iron for the engine mount. In addition I’ll look to weld the oil heat standpipe tube to the 90° sump fitting and a tab on the aft right side of the roll over assembly to mount the canopy stay gas support.  Then my sights will quickly switch to getting the engine off the fuselage and onto the engine stand.

After I get all this welding done, and the engine on the engine stand, I’ll be transitioning into moving mode and to take a load of house stuff down to NC later this week.

 

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