NetHeads, One reason I have trim tabs and belly boards on my mind lately (and tonight it's ELT and transponder ground planes) is because I'm going to carry N891JF back to the airport early Sunday morning (when there's no traffic). I hope to be flying it a week or two after that...long overdue!
One thing I've recently re-discovered is a "punch list", which is usually a last-few-items push to get your newly built house finished up for inspection and occupation. I've been keeping little lists on Post-It notes, but for the last couple of weeks I've made a Word file with a whole page of stuff that needs to get done. I typically kill off a few every night, but then add about half as many back to the list, as I run across other things I need to get done before first flight. This is a wonderful thing because it gives me real goals every night, that I know I need to get done to stay on schedule. I can also group like items and kill several of them at once...like tonight: I'm putting a carbon fiber patch over some almost-flush weld-nuts that I used to fasten the flap bracket to the middle of the flap, glassing the pitot/static tubes, laying up three ELT ground plane elements, and epoxying a little plywood shelf into the back of the fuselage to mount the transponder antenna and ground plane to. I'll probably mix up one ounce of Aeropoxy and use it to knock out all four of these little jobs. Without the punch list, I'd probably never have given it enough thought to group them together efficiently like this. The same goes for ordering missing hardware from AS&S or Wicks. Next airplane, I'm STARTING with a punch list. It's a bit of a slave driver, but that's not such a bad thing, and it IS a more efficient way to build. Another thing the list does is gives me plenty of options. If I run into a roadblock on one thing, there are twenty others I can scan through and find "something" that can be done. Tonight's version of the punch list is at http://www.n56ml.com/n891jf/punch_list.pdf . It'll change again tomorrow night, as I'll have crossed off 2-5. Last night I got started on glassing the static/pitot tubes together into something more aerodynamic (see enclosed image). Tonight I sanded the foam to shape better, and will be adding filler tonight, sanding and glassing it tomorrow night... Mark Langford ML at N56ML.com website at http://www.N56ML.com -------------------------------------------------------- -------------- next part -------------- A non-text attachment was scrubbed... Name: pitot_static_start.jpg Type: image/jpeg Size: 72467 bytes Desc: not available URL: <http://list.krnet.org/mailman/private/krnet_list.krnet.org/attachments/20140513/91bb5d18/attachment.jpg>
