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