Project 5 build thread

[alexM]

Got my first shipment from Kitfox a couple of days ago. It arrived in perfect condition and the parts all look great.
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I had no idea the McBeans were Italian (dang I hope at least one person gets that one).

I sold my non-aero shaped wing struts to a member of this forum, and they left here this morning in a Prius owned by the builder of a Highlander - headed for Homedale, ID. Funny because he didn't know me or the buyer of the struts, just a guy helping out because of our common interest in amateur built airplanes.

Today I'm in the process of building a set of precision 46" long saw horses so that I can begin fabrication of the wings. I just found some ideas on the internet and then bought the straightest lumber I could find. Then I further selected them to create a pair of pin-straight I beams.
The rest of the lumber will be used for the legs, and when they are done I'll square them up and Bondo them to my brand new garage floor (cringing a little bit on that but sacrifices have to be made).

[alexM]

I am now more envious of the build threads of you guys with immaculate three car garages with epoxy floors. I wonder how many of the rest of you fell into the same trap I have, requiring some nest building before really getting any airplane parts cut. It's a rabbit trail that goes deep into the earth.

We moved in March to a house we bought over a year ago. The 'new' house is a Victorian built in 1905. The house was a dump but it had good bones and once my favorite woman is done with it, it will be quite an upgrade (it's actually shocking how much we've done so far). The garage though, not so much. Before the move I had an approximately two car garage before with a pretty good loft, and now I have a long single car garage. I won't win any contests for building in the smallest space, especially because I already have a hangar, but it's not ideal.

115 years old and no one ever poured a slab in the garage. Where the house has good bones the garage does not. At some point in the last century someone extended the garage from roughly 11.5 x 21' to about 11.5 x 30'. I'm happy for the extra 9' but it's obvious that whoever did the extension had no structural background of any kind. Where the studs used to go up to the rafters, they cut them off. At first glance it appeared like they installed a header. In reality they nailed a 2x6 to the side of the cut off studs and provided no support at the ends. It was literally hanging from the studs instead of holding them up.

The stud spacing for the entire structure ranges from 24-29". Several of the ceiling joists (the horizontal piece) was sagging from people using them as loft storage. Upon exposing the studs on the long back wall I found many that were a Rube Goldberg variation of scabbed together 2x4s at random angles.

We had a slab poured about twenty days before we moved in. With the house being a priority I have been tripping on everything I own just getting various projects done. This past weekend it was time to make space to bring the fuselage home or build wings. I started by staring at those messy studs and then came to the conclusion that I would need to shore up the structure before I put in any work benches, extra outlets, or hang anything on the walls.

At the end of one long sweaty day I had removed the imposter "header", trimmed the hanging studs a bit higher, installed a plate a cross the bottom of the them, created a more substantial header from two 2x6s and made two stub walls to support it. I doubled up the ceiling joists with full length "sisters", jacking up the old sagging pieces before joining them together. I'm a big fan of screws and haven't spent much time swinging a hammer in the past few decades, and certainly not since getting bifocals.

I have replaced the dreary incandescent bulbs with some of those LED lights with "wings". Holy smokes I could probably offer the place up for surgical procedures if they didn't mind some dirt. I've got several pieces of peg board to put up and some budget for benches, cabinets and storage solutions.

My saw horses for wing construction are done. One of them came out pin straight, sits rock solid on the garage floor and shows perfectly level. The other is also pin straight but wobbled a little bit. At one end it measures exactly the same height (32-3/16")and the other is a tiny bit low. That will actually work out well for purposes of leveling them and making them "fast" to the floor with bondo.

[alexM]

I haven't posted in a bit but I have been moving forward, mostly with the logistics and preparation. A few shots here and it has improved since then. After making structural improvements on the garage I sheeted most of the walls with OSB and primed everything. I added LED lighting and three strategically located outlets. I set up a charging station for various electric tools. I bought a big roll around tool chest to use as a bench and to store the majority of my automotive tools. It won't actually be moved except to retrieve FOD. In a stroke of OCD insanity I used my label maker to identify every drawer.
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I loathe peg board but put some up anyway. We had some gray paint left over from another project which my girlfriend encouraged me to use up, so that's what is going on there. You can see my charging station to the right under one of the new outlets. That is an antique dynamite crate I bought when I was a single dude. New tools include the 4' digital level and a good 4' straight edge. The yellow plastic level is junk more suitable for playing whiffle ball than establishing either straight or level. I've got a real nice 6' level in my hangar that I'll be replacing it with. Not visible are the Milwaukee die grinder, angle grinder and pop rivet gun.

I also went through the list of builder tools and realized I wasn't going to get very far before obtaining some of them. After doing some online shopping I came to the conclusion that the Kitfox prices on Hysol, Clecos, drill bits, reamers, swage tools, etc. are quite competitive with the rest of the world, so that became my second order. I also bought a ton of clamps.

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I then bought a smaller roll around tool cart to have next to me while working on the plane. Then I pulled out the bins of hardware that came with the project. Pro tip: Don't drive around for three weeks in your sporty SUV with those in the back even if they're shrink wrapped. My first new skill was learning to identify pop rivets and AN hardware. In doing so I learned quite a bit, including identifying and cross referencing everything.
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The manual starts with flight controls so that's what I did too. Part of my hardware identification skills came when I disassembled everything and measured every fastener, checked torque and measured any dimensions that were left to the builder to fabricate. It was going along swimmingly until I came to the white parts on the bench, which you'll all recognize as the rudder pedal/brake pedal attach brackets. They look fine but had several dimensional issues.

Another email to Kitfox resulted in an order for prefabricated parts, which are now in hand. While those were on the way I flew to the east coast to ferry a Cardinal RG back to Seattle for a friend/previous student of mine. He and his wife had been on vacation in St Maarten and were "stranded" when the pandemic struck. They were finally able to get a repatriation flight to the US, and in the meantime Mike had bought this plane sight unseen. The trip started with gear retraction issues (fixed on the ground and test flown satisfactorily), then radio issues (solve in the air) and some typical Cessna gauge issues. Then throw in some of the craziest weather along our route of flight, we finally arrived in KBFI after 24.1 hours of flight time. The last pic shown below is SW of Casper, WY where we had a ground speed of 28 knots. It was a rough ride. We had two times we landed to wait for thunderstorms to blow over us and fought some marginal VFR across Idaho.
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