It’s been over two months since I posted an update. Apologies, between being back home for a friend’s wedding, then having some family visiting me there has been a lot going on. But there’s been a lot of progress on the Kitfox in between, so let me catch you up on that.

Flight controls are in! This was a bit of a slog, and while rewarding to finally be done, it wasn’t without frustration. The difficulty was mostly centred around mounting the Control Column into the fuselage.

I messed up the control column mounting bracket and column bearing block and had to order some replacement parts to make them again.

On the control column bracket, I made two mistakes. The first was that I pressed in the bushing into the bearing, where the bushing would not spin/turn like it should. I immediately realized my mistake, and it would have been recoverable except for my second mistake which was botching the mounting holes in the bracket.

The first hole I drilled was right up against the inside wall of the bracket so you wouldn’t have been able to get a tool on the head of the bolt. I tried drilling a new hole, but because I had to have it off the centre line of the internal box part of the bracket to give it clearance from the errant hole, it meant that the two mounting holes on the outer side of the bracket were now too close to the outside wall of the bracket.

For the bearing block, I ended up drilling the second mounting hole crooked, which meant the whole block was kinked, and I’d have to remove a lot of material to get the control column to move smoothly.

Basically, my problem was back drilling from the underside of the fuselage. I wasn’t able to get enough force behind me to keep things straight and I think the bracket shifted as I started drilling as I hadn’t gotten it clamped as well as I’d have liked. That’s probably the big downside of having the fuselage mounted in the stand I made; I couldn’t just tip it over on its side to drill.

I ended up ordering new parts from Kitfox to redo it all, and learn from my mistakes. Instead of back drilling into the bracket itself, I back drilled into a piece of scrap plywood and used that as a drill template when drilling into the bracket proper. I found where I wanted the bracket positioned in the fuselage, used a sharpie to mark it, then lined up the plywood template over the markings and drilled. It worked really well.

The second bearing block deformed while drilling the second mounting hole (has it not deformed for anyone?), but the hole was straight through the block this time. I used a drum sander bit in my drill press to remove a lot of material to get the hole in the block back to a circular shape and a clearance fit for the control column.

I had seen a thread on here about someone suggesting using sleeves around the bolts to stop the block from deforming, and I was hoping to go that method, but the tube I received had not been made with tight tolerances and I didn’t have the tooling to correct it so I had to go with the manual’s way in an effort to keep the project moving. It would be nice if this area was improved in the design and fabrication. It probably many days to get everything moving smoothly.

Control Column Mounting Bracket.jpg Control Column Bearing Block.jpg

The centre console is in now too, and I’ve got the detent brackets placed and drilled for riveting. I was a little confused here with regards the instructions for the pre-fab kit parts when it comes to the rivets to use. I had consulted with Brandon on a different part of the instructions earlier and he said they’re a bit out of date so I suspect its the same story with the rivets. Basically the rivets that are specified in the pre-fab instructions didn’t come in the kit (not listed in inventory) and the rivets that are in the manual are too short. I’ve ended up measuring the length of rivets needed and have ordered solid flush head rivets in place of the pop rivets. I’m probably going to paint my centre console the same colour as my panel, and I’d like it to be as smooth as possible, hence the solid flush rivets.

Next I moved onto the door frames and window frames and have just finished bonding and riveting them in. This process was easy enough after watching Aaron Butte’s video where he discusses with Brandon how Kitfox does their doors and windows and what tips they have for builders. I’d highly recommend giving this a watch if you’re about to start your doors and window frames, it really helped me understand what to do.

I'm going to start working on the body work for the window and door frames next.

Window and Door Frame.jpg

I’ve been documenting my build on YouTube, mostly for my folks, family, and friends back home, but figure I should post a link here too. It’s not much more info than I’ve already written. Here’s the latest video...



Lastly, I want to give a shout out to Martin. I don’t know if he’s on the forum here, but he flies a Kitfox Model 4 in Clifden in the West of Ireland, and while I was home I had the chance to go out and visit him and see his Kitfox and chat all things flying for a couple of hours. It was great meeting another Kitfox owner and pilot, especially someone from my home county in Ireland. He's got a video on YouTube with him flying around some parts of Ireland and it is stunning https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aT4CUU0ehXU

Martin.jpg