Completed match drilling the firewall - 2 hours

 Well, I woke up this morning having not slept. The frustrations of work and this firewall eating away at me. I decided to take some measurements of the pieces just to double check which piece may be incorrect in case I need to put in an order to Van’s. For some reason the measurements were just fine. And I thought to myself “That’s weird” and at that moment it occurred to me what the issue was. I had tried to cleco the recess on the bulkhead in the wrong way, it was protruding into the “Firewall forward” side, and not recessed to the “Aft side”. Total stupidity on my part. My mind is just mush and I’m not thinking straight. At least I left for work feeling uplifted that things were slowly falling into place.

When I got home, I snuck again into the garage to correctly fit the bulkhead recess. Sure enough it fit really well. So I completed match drilling it. 
 
 

All that was left was to complete the rest of the firewall match drilling which went very quickly and smoothly. Now all that’s left to do is do my homework to figure out what pieces get dimpled/countersunk for the next evenings work session.

Firewall recess fitment issues - 2 hours

 Again, it's been absolutely insane at work. Unfortunately I had to put a monstrous weekend and I just don't have the motivation to jump into the build at least on Monday. Tonight, I decided to at least cleco the firewall recess and match drill it. Straight away I ran into issues.  The top most #30 holes on the sides do not want to fit. If I force the cleco's then the top most corners really want to "Dog Ear" up placing considerable strain on the corners of the recess, which was concerning. I uncleco'd and re-cleco'd the recess a few times. Nothing seemed to work. I though perhaps I received a miss bent piece.




So, I wrap up the night feeling quite frustrated thinking that I need to order a new bulkhead recess.

Little bit of work on the Firewall shims - 2 hours

 It's impossible to get started on the project, I've been so very busy that I am just drained. I managed to get in the garage to fit some of the upper pieces of the Firewall. I cleaned up the top of the F-601N angles, the F-601C gussets and also cut the F-601P spacers. I must admit I never enjoyed cutting strips. I have to use the band saw and then try to make everything straight on the sanding station. It's time consuming and a pain. I really wish I have a small metal shear.

Continued work on the Firewall - 5 hours

Today was filled with a lot of reading and research. Basically at this point you need to have a fairly good idea of what systems you will be using. Fuel Injected, or Carbureted – This dictates the Aux fuel firewall doubler. I’ve read suggestions if you are using the Vans gascolator (or perhaps the Andair gascolator) you would be wise to install the VA-161 Gascolator Bracket now rather than later as it becomes fairly tricky to do it later. I have my eye on the Aerolab flush Gascolator from flyboys, but I am reading all of the opinions on it and they are generally favorable. I do like the advantages of the design (easy to access, good filter, behind fire wall). I will have to think more on this.

I also did some research on the brake reservoir. I do have 2 sets of Grove brake master cylinders, so it would be nice to have the Grove reservoir. I see that people have different methods to mount this to the firewall but I will have to be careful of the engine mount so that it is not in the way. I read up on the Reservoir Dog attachment for the Vans unit that will allow aerobatic maneuvers. Lots of decisions. 

Other than the VA-161 Gascolator Bracket, I don't have to worry too much about what systems I am going to use at this moment in time. 

I started with setting up the bulkhead to place the F-601J angles. I found that using the scotch tape for the shims like everyone else uses works really well.

Next I clamped the angle to the bulkhead and used the 3/32" drill-bit spacer at the bottom that everyone uses. I borrowed a dice from the kids as a small spacer to allow me to clamp the angle flange.


One thing that I've learned early on, is chances of success are far better if you drill thick material on a drill press rather than by hand. drilling thick material by a palm drill will always have a slightly crooked hole. This can create edge distance issues, and a crooked hole, means crooked rivet, which often results in poor slumped rivet. Always try to use a drill press if you can!

So I flipped the bulkhead over and back drilled all holes a slight amount - not all the way through. This makes a nice pilot hole in the thick material for completing drilling on the press. The results are always perfect!

Started working on the Firewall - 2.5 hours

I've been putting in some crazy hours at work these last few weeks. ~95 hour weeks for the last 5 weeks to hit the deadline on Friday. So now I actually have a little time to work on the RV. In one sense I'm eager to start in on the build....but after the amount of stress and pressure I was recently under. I'm not exactly keen on jumping into the next project full bore.

I basically putz'd around in the garage. I grabbed all the pieces needed for the fire wall and laid them out. Took me a while to find the AA6-063x3/4x3/4 angle needed to make the F-601E-1 stiffener. I then looked at Mike Bullocks build log and noticed he had the same issue too and when he mentions to use the 6' piece. Ahhh, there it was. In the corner of the spare bedroom away from all the other RV parts. Man my brain is in a fog.



Still sort of motivated...I decided to cut out the F-601J angles and the F-601P spacers. Here's a funny thing. I'm not into the fuse an hour and I've already made a mistake. I tried cutting the F-601P spaces out of the small strip of AS3-063x1/2x18 not realizing that the width is not right. Ugh. Not a big deal as the part is really cheap and shipping will be easy. But I sure don't have my head in the game.


After I cut the parts, I went in to start researching everything I need to know about the bulkhead and penetrations to the bulkhead.  

The fuselage has arrived - 10 hours

The fuselage has arrived. I ordered it Sept 6th and came just a few days after the original "Crate Date".  Its not light, and it wasn't easy to move. But with four guys we managed to get it into the garage. Ahhh, so exciting. Lots of parts I recognize and a huge bag of hardware!
Oh, did I mention how well packed everything is? Top notch Vans...Top notch! I took a couple of hours in the evenings to work on the inventory. About 10 hours in all to sort it all out.
 



 

Private Pilots License is Completed!

Well, admittedly I've been very quiet on the blog.  I've had my nose buried in books and in studying to complete my license. So rather than bore you withe the everyday particulars here is the summary of my experience:

I managed to complete my private pilots license at the end of May 2018. It’s been quite a journey, trying to fill my head with all that knowledge is not an easy task anymore now that I’m older. I can definitely tell I had to work much harder to memorize things.

I started the license back in about July 2016. I was finishing up the wing build and I was trying to figure out if I order the fuselage, or do I work on my license. I was coming up on a long weekend that was going to take me out of town and i knew that I would have lots of time on my hands. So i decided to sign up for online ground school and they provided me with a copy of the Aviation Textbook, “From the Ground Up”.
Fortunate for me the text book arrived just in time for me to leave. So i spend the entire long weekend reading. After that I dabbled in the ground school but never really gave it 100% effort. Soon winter was approaching and I know I needed buckle down. And that’s exactly what I did. By January I was halfway complete in the course (Helped by two full weeks holidays over Christmas). By May I was 80% complete.

At that point I figured it was a good time to start actually flying. At first I was booking two days a week for flying. Wednesday mornings and Saturday Mornings. Things went really well through the summer as the weather was often good. August 1, 2017 I wrote and passed my written PPL exam. August 29, 2017 was my first solo. It went by so quick that I barely remember it. The take off was nice, so was the circuit and final approach. But I bounced it a little on the landing. Not bad, but not perfect. After that I continued at that pace into fall but as soon as November hit, the weather was awful. Too poor visibility, too cold, wind shear, there was always something that made it not safe for flying. At one point over the Christmas holidays I had 20 bookings in a row that were cancelled. Finally February brought more favorable weather which allowed me to finally get back in the air and by March 7, I completed my short solo cross country. I took 4 weeks in there to go on a family vacation so it was a perfect time to study for the flight test.

May 7th I took my private pilot flight test and passed. All went pretty well, there’s a few things that I could have done better. The examiner hit me with a few tough questions. In the end I did ok, although my spiral dive recovery was a bit abrupt. I should have separated the recovery into three separate maneuvers (Power off, roll wings level, ease out of the dive) as I kind of blended the last two. I know this....when you screw up on something on your flight exam.....you will never forget it and never do it again.

Unfortunately I just had a few flights that I needed to complete in order to finish and get my license. The long cross country solo and I have 0.8 hours under the hood to finish. So after one particularly great weather weekend, I had knocked off the solo. And couple days later I had the 0.8 under the hood complete. May 25th I was a pilot!!