2/28/08 12:00
Lots of progress! Spent 8hrs over the weekend continuing to "tool up" - - assembling tools and the like. It was good to spend some time in the hangar with music playing... listened to the classic old Salty Dog album "Every Dog Has Its Day" a couple of times. On Sunday morning Janet and I picked up a very nice old workbench that Paul Poberezny has given me. That was very kind of him, like so many others he's being very encouraging of my new endeavour. Did some practice with the scroll saw and table router on bits of scrap wood, and practiced soaking and bending some capstrip at home. Felt like a real homebuilder with pieces of spruce sitting in the bath, although Charlie Becker said I won't really have "made it" until I'm using the toilet to bend my wood! Visited the hangar on a couple of evenings this week and the really big news is that I have cut my first official piece of wood on the project... hooray, after 2 months and 40 hours of preparation the real work has begun!! 200 feet of capstrip and several birch ply boards arrived from Aircraft Spruce today, and I used the table router to cut a 3/16 wide and 1/16 deep notch in a 6 foot length of capstrip. Worked a treat, and the plywood fits the notch beautifully. Just 194 feet to go. Next step is to start making the plywood webs, hoping to make progress at the weekend. Talked to Jim during the week, he has joined the 1 1/2 Strutter group at East Fortune and thinks he can obtain a supply of trailing edge material from Bruntons of Musselburgh. Heard back from Roger Freeman in Texas who is creating me a quote for the metal fittings.
2/17/08 7:00
The plans arrived yesterday from Replicraft. They are good quality (plus I got a copied set of factory drawings) so, the project is a "go"! "Tooling up" is now underway. I've ordered a workbench from Grizzly, birch ply and spruce capstrip from Aircraft Spruce, brass screws from a woodwork supplier and after spending time yesterday scoping routers, bandsaws, sanders etc in the local hardware stores, I bought them all today. Interesting, I've lived in Oshkosh for 7 years and yesterday was the first time I have been in "Menards" hardware store... and I saw 2 people in there wearing EAA baseball caps!
After all this waiting it will be good to actually start doing some project work.
The replica aircraft section of the Aerodrome forum is - by a long way - the most helpful community resource out there. It's full of useful information and there's a great group of people involved. Also, Charlie Becker has been working on some "video hints for homebuilders" that EAA will be putting online soon. He showed me a few, they will be extremely useful - - - reading books, articles and browsing around internet forums is great, but it's very helpful to be able to actually see a task being done.
A very nice Zenith altimeter showed up on ebay last week... I set up a max bid of $601 on through Auctionsniper... thought I had a chance but there was someone else that really wanted it, and I was outbid at $611. This would have been perfect for the Pup... however, there is plenty of time yet before I'll be needing instruments!
2/09/08 2:00
Another poor week... have been mega busy at work but not much to do on the project until the plans arive. I have, however, ordered a nice maple workbench from Grizzly along with some basic woodworking tools, clamps and glue. Have receieved a few emails from Jim who is researching the major wood pieces, and has hooked up with Tim Rayner about some castings.
Another poor week... have been mega busy at work but not much to do on the project until the plans arive. I have, however, ordered a nice maple workbench from Grizzly along with some basic woodworking tools, clamps and glue. Have receieved a few emails from Jim who is researching the major wood pieces, and has hooked up with Tim Rayner about some castings.
2/3/08 3:00
Went to look at the Bleriot project in the EAA Weeks hangar - - drew inspiration and it’s interesting how now I am looking at projects through different eyes, looking at construction details, the way they are building jigs and clamping things, etc. Went through the Grizzly catalogue (while the Packers were on TV losing the the Giants in the Superbowl semi-final) selecting various tools that I will need. Read Ron Wantajja’s book on Kitplane construction, very good overview of the subject, and some good technical details, lots of common sense advice. Watched instructional videos on the web about woodworking, use of tools etc, particularly routers. EAA should do videos like this. Messed around with various pieces of CAD software and did internet research on the whole issue of making metal fittings this way. There will be quite a learning curve on the software. Talked to Bauken about laser cutting of metal parts, but he strongly recommends water jet cutting as it won’t cause cracks to form in the metal. He explained to me the history of aircraft metals and why I’ll be using 4130 alloy steel. I am desperate for the plans to arrive!
1/19/08 6:00
Over the past 2 weeks I’ve continued to do internet research and reading of books. Got EAA’s manual on wooden aircraft construction, which was interesting and helpful, as have been the Tony Bingelis articles on the EAA Homebuilders HQ website. I realize why Bingelis is regarded so highly, his style is very clear & helpful. Acquired Windsock Datafile 28 on the Avro 504K which I’m sure will be consulted many times. Re-read Nigel Hamlin-Wright’s book. Ordered Aircraft Spruce catalogue. Researched glues. The Aerodrome forum is clearly going to be a major asset. I am officially watching the mail every day now until the plans arrive! Will continue to learn as much as I can until then. Enthusiasm is higher now than when I started, this has been very educational and a lot of fun so far. Already this project is giving me huge insight into homebuilding. My only concern is that the plans are of poor quality. I have shared with a select few people my intent to do this project. I’ve been greeted with great enthusiasm and encouragement, but I know that there are doubts about whether I will follow through and actually do this. That’s OK.
1/5/08 3:00
Joined WWI Aero and ordered Avro 504 plans. Joined the Aerodrome forum. Bookmarked about a dozen websites of interest. Sent a few emails. Rotec engines were very quick in replying and provided excellent information. Set up various standing searches on eBay for WW1 parts and other phrases that might be helpful. I’ve learned previously that this is a great way to keep an eye on rare items when they come up.
Not a great week for progress on the project. I have been very busy at work. Anyway, the main news is that the Avro 504 plans arrived on Wednesday. They were very incomplete and poor quality reproductions. Within about 30 minutes of studying them, I had decided that a "reality check" was needed... it's going to be hard enough building a WW1 plane from scratch, do I need to be battling through a fundamental lack of information as well? So, after much head-scratching and looking around the internet etc etc I have landed on a Sopwith Pup. Main reasons for this are (a) excellent plans availability (both original plans and an excellent redrawn set by Jim Kiger)... (b) it's a proper fighter... (c) seemingly decent flying qualities... (d) much smaller than an Avro, better fit in the hangar! (e) good builder support network, there are several of them out there and quite a few people have already done CAD work on the Sopwith metal fittings (f) Jim McTaggart wants to build a Pup too, so we could share contacts etc. So there are a lot of good reasons to go in this direction, and only one big reason not to - it's a single seater. But, having mulled around on the Avro idea for the past month, I realise this isn't fundamentally a flying project, it's a building project. So, now I'm back waiting for plans to arrive from Replicraft. The Aircraft Spruce catalogue arrived so I'll have some fun with that. Alan offered help with the woodwork aspects which I plan to take him up on!
1/26/08 7:00Went to look at the Bleriot project in the EAA Weeks hangar - - drew inspiration and it’s interesting how now I am looking at projects through different eyes, looking at construction details, the way they are building jigs and clamping things, etc. Went through the Grizzly catalogue (while the Packers were on TV losing the the Giants in the Superbowl semi-final) selecting various tools that I will need. Read Ron Wantajja’s book on Kitplane construction, very good overview of the subject, and some good technical details, lots of common sense advice. Watched instructional videos on the web about woodworking, use of tools etc, particularly routers. EAA should do videos like this. Messed around with various pieces of CAD software and did internet research on the whole issue of making metal fittings this way. There will be quite a learning curve on the software. Talked to Bauken about laser cutting of metal parts, but he strongly recommends water jet cutting as it won’t cause cracks to form in the metal. He explained to me the history of aircraft metals and why I’ll be using 4130 alloy steel. I am desperate for the plans to arrive!
1/19/08 6:00
Over the past 2 weeks I’ve continued to do internet research and reading of books. Got EAA’s manual on wooden aircraft construction, which was interesting and helpful, as have been the Tony Bingelis articles on the EAA Homebuilders HQ website. I realize why Bingelis is regarded so highly, his style is very clear & helpful. Acquired Windsock Datafile 28 on the Avro 504K which I’m sure will be consulted many times. Re-read Nigel Hamlin-Wright’s book. Ordered Aircraft Spruce catalogue. Researched glues. The Aerodrome forum is clearly going to be a major asset. I am officially watching the mail every day now until the plans arrive! Will continue to learn as much as I can until then. Enthusiasm is higher now than when I started, this has been very educational and a lot of fun so far. Already this project is giving me huge insight into homebuilding. My only concern is that the plans are of poor quality. I have shared with a select few people my intent to do this project. I’ve been greeted with great enthusiasm and encouragement, but I know that there are doubts about whether I will follow through and actually do this. That’s OK.
1/5/08 3:00
Joined WWI Aero and ordered Avro 504 plans. Joined the Aerodrome forum. Bookmarked about a dozen websites of interest. Sent a few emails. Rotec engines were very quick in replying and provided excellent information. Set up various standing searches on eBay for WW1 parts and other phrases that might be helpful. I’ve learned previously that this is a great way to keep an eye on rare items when they come up.
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