--First hand riveting, pneumatic riveting, impact gun riveting, safety-wiring, torque-wrench use, cleco usage, castle nut/cotter pin bolt assembly, aluminum deburring....
Overall, we can say that the "Two Weeks to Taxi" program is exactly what we signed up for. There are five Glasair employees--Ben, Mike, Bryce, Ryan, and Tyler--permanently assigned to putting our airplane together and gainfully employing us while doing it. They are constantly working on various parts of the airplane and calling for our 'help' when it's time for us to learn about a section of the airplane, or a specific component. Instead of trying to describe it, here's a string of pictures:
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| Completed Aircraft (from the last 2-week build period) in the hangar. Our fuselage is about to go on the yellow stands in the back. |
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| This is our personalized checklist of signoff items for the Two Weeks to Taxi build.... |
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| ...this is the entire checklist! |
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| Ben shows us the fuselage mold, on which a fiberglass fuselage half is currently setting. Ours is carbon-fiber and is already done. The fuselage is made of two layers or fiberglass (or carbon fiber) with a foam sandwich in between. |
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| Our engine--a Superior Air Parts XP 400. For the airplane buffs out there, it's a Lycoming IO-390 with a few nice adds, like roller lifters on the cam. It puts out 215HP and burns roughly 10gp in cruise. |
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| Tracy worked on the rudder pedals and brake system for a good part of the day. This is the brake master cylinder. |
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| These are the brakes prior to lines being added or any fittings torqued down. |
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| This is the complete brake system, including the brake reservoir. The bright orange dots on the fittings are torque seal--so you can inspect bolts to ensure they don't back out. |
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| Day 1 and we fit the wings to the fuselage in order to set the dihedral. Our airplane has a 2deg dihedral in the wings which makes it more stable. After we set the dihedral, we drilled holes in the aluminum wing spars to fit the final bolts (Ryan is in the background setting the jig for the drill angle). We then took the wings back off for the rest of the work on them. Hi Tracy! |
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| The flap lever after assembly. It actuates just like a hand-activated parking brake in a car...totally different function, though! |
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| The left wing (after setting the dihedral) in its jig waiting for the fuel tanks to go in and final riveting. |
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| The pitot tube viewed from inside the left wing. The metal tube is for airflow to the airspeed indicator; the wires are for the pitot heat (in case of icing in inclement weather). |
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| Tracy's first rivets--in the engine transducer bracket. It will hold our engine oil and fuel transducers which will transmit engine readings to the cockpit. |
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| Our wheels! I never thought i'd be unpacking a wheel bearing and re-packing it today. We did this to remove the shipping grease (keeps the wheel from corroding) and put in the working grease (helps it roll, baby!). This was messy but only took about 20 minutes. This is one of the great parts about owning an experimental--you are supposed to change the grease in these about every year at a minimum--like changing oil in our car. If this were a certified airplane we'd need to pay somebody to do it. We will just do it ourselves. |
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| The vertical fin spar. These are Eric's first rivets--woo-hoo! The plate at the top is where the rudder attaches. |
Cheers, Eric & Tracy
