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
• Chapter 20 – Winglets
• Chapter 14 – Center Section Spar: Spar Box
. Center Section Spar: Shear Web & Spar Caps
. Center Section Spar: Final Steps