I'm building a plane

A Speck in the Distance

Mark Wainwright visited me today. He's building a Falco in Watsonville, CA. with the help of a builder assist shop called Aircrafters. I wasn't sure he'd get much out of the visit, considering he's already pretty much done with his empennage, but he said he wanted to admire my tool collection, and so he did. Mark declared my stabilizer straight, and that was nice to hear.

We tried getting a scarfing jig started, wiring up the motor I bought for it, and playing with the lathe a bit, but that came to a stop pretty quickly when I realized I had no 5/8" drill bit to make the collar to link the motor to the sanding drum. What we lost in productivity we made up in discussion, poring over the plans and looking at photos of Falco details on his laptop.

It's great to have someone around who is journeying through the same part of the wilderness as yourself. Ryan Vaughn and Mark are also going to Oshkosh this week, so the California newbies will be well represented.

Tonight I finished rebuilding a rudder rib and glued it in place. I ripped some strips for the new tip bows, as well as the ten foot long stringers that make up the new elevator spar.

Yesterday I took a Cessna 172 out to Livermore airport and put myself on the waiting list for a hangar. Of all the airports around the bay area, I think that one would be my top choice. On my way out I watched Doug Henson taxi out in his yellow Falco and take off, turning downwind and disappearing. The idea of a finished airplane to me is similar to what I saw: just a speck in the distance.

Resorcinol

The Resorcinol arrived today. This is the same stuff my dad used to build several wooden boats when I was a kid.  As it was well above the minimum temperature for use, I wasted no time in mixing up a batch, doing a test block and a tip bow for the elevator. Stirring the fine powder into the resin and smelling the stuff filled me with nostalgia. It was the same gloppy mess now that it was back then. It's a different animal than the Aerolite. It's slow. Pot life and cure times are much longer, but is otherwise more demanding, as it needs high temperatures, machined surfaces, no gaps, and lots of pressure.

I continued fiddling with the spar doublers on the rudder, fitting ribs and blocks and plywood pads. Tonight was a light one.

My flight instructor seems to think I can pass the private pilot checkride. I have been told to make an appointment with the local FAA examiner.

The Rudder, and life on other planets

I'm being snobbish about rebuilding the tip bows for the stab and elevator, waiting for resorcinol to show up. Float sanding the stabilizer will wait a while. The rudder has occupied me instead. I made a little mistake, chiselling surplus plywood from the aft face that wasn't supposed to be there, then I read the manual about the spar doublers and other steps I hadn't noticed before. There is a little box structure built up behind the spar above the control arm that I had no idea I had to build. If it wasn't there in the plans, I'd probably continue building happily. But when I see where it's placed and how strong it obviously is, I fast-forward years into the future to a hairy crosswind landing with full deflection, envisioning all the twisting, wrenching forces the control arm exerts on the rudder. All that strength in that little box structure will come in mighty handy. Engineers are clever folk.

I looked at an Aeronca Champ last week. The are few airplanes that say "Guillows scale rubber power flying model kit" more than that one. I think poking around in a little taildragger at 1200 feet would be fun for a few years. I didn't buy it, but 20 grand seems like a low entry fee to get into aviation. Of course, it lacks some of the conveniences that other, more posh aircraft owners enjoy, such as an electrical system. I've also been pointed towards a Porterfield CP-65, which I'd never heard of before, and I haven't seen yet. It's rarer, and perhaps cuter, if that's possible. Solo from the front or the back(!). And as my plane-finding advisor said, "If you need something for it and you can't find it, you just make it."

Since Alfred Scott "outed" me on the seqair website a couple weeks ago, other builders have materialized- a couple of them closeby, and at similar stages of construction. I haven't mentioned it to them yet, but already I sense a competitive breeze blowing.

2010, people!

A Flat Place to Work

I built two work tables this weekend. The existing bench is busy with other things, it is accurately leveled, and I needed a better place to float sand the stabilizer. The tables are a variation of the EAA Chapter 1000 work table, which I discovered here. They are 3 inches higher and one foot longer than the plan. I must be getting a bit more efficient, as I managed to pick up the lumber, bang them together and level them in a day and a half. The design is good, simple, and the tops are flat and rigid. I figured if the 3/4 ply on the top makes it strong and torsionally rigid, then more 3/8 plywood on the underside would make it even stiffer, so I added that. The framing was made out of something called radiata pine, which is this pre-primed stuff that is finger-jointed together, is completely devoid of knots or splits, and seems finished to a much higher spec than the wiggly 2X4's you find and Home Depot. I noticed that the guys renovating our house would use it for any finish carpentry that would be painted, and it seems very very straight and stable to me.

I wanted them to be flat, and it didn't occur to me before today, but I have a flat-as-hell cast iron work table with a right angle jig on the end: the table saw. It's only about 2X3, but it was enough to get those tabletops framed up and flat. Even still, they were slightly twisted, so I loaded up the shelves with crap to pull them down into shape. The leveling feet are just lag bolts.

That Chapter 1000 website seems to have a lot more content in it here. I've only skimmed it myself.

Tip bows

I spend a fair amount of time ruining Alfred Scott's fine products. Actually, it only takes a moment to notch the wrong side of a laminated tip bow through a bandsaw. It's the shameful rebuilding of parts that takes time. Freshly ripped spruce strips for a new stab tip bow are drying in a form tonight. I'd like to glue it up with resorcinol, but it's not sold in California. I could perhaps get some in Oshkosh at the end of the month, or just move on and use aerolite. Aside from that setback, the stabilizer is framed up, and I even felt comfortable taking down the alignment jig tonight. The stab is straight. It's damn straight, I'm proud to say.

I've never been to Oshkosh before. I think I only take so much gawking at perfect Piper Cubs, so beyond filling up my camera's CF card with Falco reference photos, I don't have very high expectations. Which is as it should be, I guess. That's the proper approach to be blown away by an unkown event. I wasn't going to go, then told Susan (at Sequoia) that I was, and she was very happy to hear it, very excited about it, so I'm thinking there must be more to it than just a gazillion gleaming airplanes sunning in grassy fields. Or maybe that's it, and that's what's awesome about it.

My take-it-or-leave-it position on Oshkosh is emblematic, I suppose, if how I sometimes feel about aviation. I'm close to my checkride, but what the hell will I do with my license when I get it? Poke around the Sacramento Valley in a Cessna? Lame. Just go dormant until I get the Falco done? I've nearly done that with the glider already and it's embarrassing. I don't think I'll fly it even 20 hours this year. Sad, and downright dangerous too. I'd love to have a plane while I build the Falco. I sift through trade-a-plane, looking at Aeronca Champs, then old Mooneys, then Debonairs, Cessna 180's. I'm all over the map. I respect and love them all, each in their own way, from putt-putt to rocketship, but would I even have time to fly it? The problem with having airplanes is that they really get in the way of building an airplane. Perhaps I am a builder, not a flier. I'll say one thing for the flier in me, though. Yesterday I spent 9 hours driving up from L.A. and it freaking sucked, man. I think I would've enjoyed the trip a bit more in an old Mooney, more still in a new Falco.

Back on it

A distraction is gone and I'm back on the airplane. I installed the windows in the shed, and of course cracked the glass in two of them as I did it. I don't care any more. I made my own damn windows. How many people can claim that?

The new saw was humming along all through this evening as I cut the tapered leading edges for the stab, and trailing edges for the elevator. The table is waxed and very smooth, the fence is HDPE plastic and very slick, so I find moving material through the saw to be effortless compared to the old one. It seems cooperate with me, and the accuracy is in another league. Perhaps tomorrow I'll have the leading edges glued up.

I feel very close and still very far from my check ride. I've been through a stage check with another instructor to sort of figure out where the weak spots are in my flying. Well, I was weak all over, missing the airport by 20 degrees on my diversion- generally very sloppy all around. Since then, It seems like diminishing returns, but I think if I fly twice a week, perhaps even three times, I'll pull into shape. The amount of rote knowledge and the number of procedures seems just endless to me. Maybe if I spent two weeks with my head more in the books instead of playing in the garage, I'd get there a lot faster.

Diversions

What have I been up to? Not building a Falco, that's for sure. I'm so stubborn about not buying the crappy Home Depot vinyl windows for this shed I built, I decided to just build my own out of plain old redwood. Of course I underestimated the complexity and cost, and it's taken four times longer than I expected, like every other project I attempt. They are far from perfect, but they will fit nicely in the woodsy styled shed. They are awning windows, shown here standing on end.

The true bonus of this side project was the acquisition of a full size cabinet saw from Grizzly. Allow me to gush about power tools for a moment. This is a left-tilting, 10", 220 volt 3 horsepower cabinet saw with a proper Beisemeyer-style fence. It's not even very big compared to a true industrial 12" saw, but for me, it's a beast, replacing the dinky Makita contractor saw I've been using for a few years. The Makita has a lot more power than you might expect, but the fence, especially, has never been very accurate, and the table suddenly seems ridulously small. I felt as soon as I set up the new saw and turned it on that its arrival was long overdue. I ripped a thin piece of redwood that got yanked down through the slot in the throat plate. As the blade pinched and burned and howled against the wood, the motor didn't even slow down. I immediately made some zero clearance inserts for it. The thing has got some muscle and I'm using push sticks for real now, I've decided it's best not to argue with it. Even solid maple or oak hardly seems to affect the rpm of the motor.

I had mixed feelings about getting the Grizzly saw. I bought some General tools a few years ago- a floor standing drill press and a band saw. These are both heirloom power tools, built in Quebec, each sporting a Canadian flag stuck to their own special shade of green enamel. They look and feel like new versions of 1950's equipment that will outlast my grandkids. They are a joy to use, and I pondered getting a cabinet saw from General as well. I guess I will always wonder about it, but they're about twice the price, and for about a thousand bucks, the machine sitting in the workshop now seems like a true bargain. The Grizzly machines don't have quite the same classic aura as the Generals do, but if you're willing to pay, they can be very high quality. A few years ago I bought a lower priced combination sander from Grizzly. It was so awful I just returned it. It was truly junk, and I ponied up for the $450 for the real version. Good lord, what a difference. I'll keep that thing forever. The woodworking newsgroups may be full of vitriolic posts about Grizzly tools being junk, but I don't think Grizzly is really hit or miss. I think you just get what you pay for, and in this case, I didn't pay very much. The saw was perfectly aligned when I assembled it. Perfectly. If the miter slots and fence were out of parallel with the blade, it wasn't measurable by my dial indicator. I do think that their packaging is designed to just barely survive the journey from Taiwan to your front door before it starts disintegrating and scattering green painted metal parts all over the place, and often it doesn't make it that far.

With the windows about done, the saw already looks broken in, and I'm ready to give it a new challenge: tapering the leading edge stringers for the stabilizer.

The Stabilizer

I decided to teach myself a lesson and make the elevator from scratch the second time. First I made new ribs. For a bunch of little wooden triangles, it took a long time and I thew several away before I got them right. They were all pretty much junk until I brought home a planer. It seemed an extravagance as I carted it through the Home Depot parking lot, but now I can't believe I lived without one for all this time.

When the spruce stock for the elevator spar showed up, I decided to backburner the whole thing and move on, doing the trailing edge ribs for the rudder, then the tedious tapered triangular trailing edge strips for the stab. I kept going with the stab, flipping it over, leveling it and gluing on ribs. Up until last night I had been using heavy duty monofilament fishing line to jig the framing of stuff. I was sick of not being able to see it so I switched to black thread. Sounds like a boring detail, but it was like turning on the accuracy lights. Suddenly I could see everything and I could align all the ribs centerlines with much greater precision. When the errors diminish to one fifth the size they were before, it's very gratifying. With the forward stabilizer spar now in place, the emergent framing of the thing is already rather beefy. (The elevator now seems like a wisp of a thing by comparison: a delicate model airplane part trailing behind the plane.) The Falco is becoming greater than the sum of its parts. Aside from the obvious strength of the spars, you can't really point to one structural element that keeps it together. It is the whole plane that keeps itself together- the aggregate of all the little joints and skeletal parts glued to other parts, skinned with other parts that collectively becomes something very very strong. It's heartening to see that strength revealing itself this early in the game, especially considering it's something I'll trust my life, and the lives of others in.

Since I wrecked the elevator, I've taken a more careful approach. I've slowed down. Last night I glanced at the clock after an exciting, tour de force round of sanding rib ends- 1:30am, and considered gluing on a couple more ribs. I thought better of it. Though I like to sleep while the Aerolite cures instead of waiting around, too many times I've pulled off clamps the next morning and furrowed my brow over subtly misaligned parts. There's not much you can do about it at that point. Of course you can fix anything, but in any case it's easier to simply do it right the first time, and when I'm tired, I'm sloppy.

I flew in the Debonair (the F150 work truck version of the Beech Bonanza) a couple more times. It had made a big impression on me when we made the trip to Oregon to see the Lancair factory. Ben Freelove, my flight instructor, let me fly left seat in it for a trip up to the gliderport. I wanted to take him for a ride in the Duo Discus as he's never been in a glider before. Of course, at 160 knots we got there in a big hurry, and I was floored by the workload as you make your descent and race around the pattern. During the descent you feel like you'll never get that thing slowed down, then you lower the gear at 140 knots and it feels like soneone lassoed you from behind. "There. Now it's like a normal airplane.", Ben says calmly as I'm trying to figure out where I'm going to enter the pattern. What's odd about that plane is that it's so fast and the workload so frenetic, that you feel like the plane will just smother you with procedure, bite you and you'll just auger it in. Then, miraculously, as you turn from base to final there's nothing left to do, it transforms into a complete pussycat and settles gingerly down on the numbers, making you look much better than you actually are.  The smile on your face fades a bit as you pull up to the pumps and realize the Debonair thinks you are a much richer pilot than you actually are.

My rental Cessna was down again last week, so we took the Deb up again last week, flying left seat again, and did a few white knuckle touch and go's at Napa and came back. I'm supposed to be getting my last hour of hood time in (simulated instrument flight), but instead we just buzzed around, sunny and happy. The fella that owns the plane wants it to be flown more often, and I'm confident that the cobwebs (no joke) in the landing gear I spotted during the preflight are now blown clear. It would seem that I'm procrastinating getting ready for my checkride, but I don't care. I love that plane. It's also a lot closer to the Falco, performance-wise, than a dowdy Cessna, so I'm getting ready. 6+ years beforehand.

Another friend at work is pushing to buy a plane. Perhaps a 3 or 4 way partnership. He's all gung ho for a Cessna 182. I understand it: the solid IRF learning platform, the lack of depreciation, the no-nonsense load hauling, the reasonable insurance and on and on, but there's something so ridiculously dull about it. It is not original to wish for a Bonanza, but I still do. Such are the age old yearnings of the freshly minted pilot.

I took the written test for my Private Pilot rating. 95. Maybe the examiner will go easy on me.

The spar arrives, and so does a setback

Friday the wing spars arrived at my office. I commisioned the help of the only fella I know with a lumber rack, Manuel (who was the foreman on our house renovation). It's strange seeing something that big maneuver through a quiet residential neighborhood. They looked good, and as I hung them from the rafters, I felt a little humbled knowing that this was all taking far longer than expected, that I probably wouIdn't be taking them down until a year from now. And today I probably added three months to that schedule.

I opened up the garage door today and all hell broke loose. I had hung the tail group spars from the rafters, up out of the way, bolted together in an inverted T. The door would clunk against them when it raised to the end of its travel, and I always took note of that, always opening the door only halfway. It was stupid and lazy, really, not to move them to a better location. Today I just opened that door without thinking. The spars snapped from the loops of twine holding them, came crashing down on the work table below, and crushed the elevator, which just happened to be resting on the table beneath. I was actually preparing to put the second leading edge skin on it- the piece was perhaps 90% complete.

The spars were fine, but the elevator is beyond hope. A third of the ribs are gone, the leading and trailing edges were snapped off. I was stunned, knowing that trying to rebuild it was a little silly. That all thay work was out the window in an instant. Sipping a double martini, I considered that I may not be cut out for this project- I am far too careless. But I also considered that I now had a chance to build the damn thing properly. As the elevator progressed, the number of things I didn't like about it kept piling up. Several weeks of work were lost, but several weeks of learning how to do it properly were gained, and I wasn't doing it properly.

Tonight I simply cleaned up. I will make the ribs and tip bows myself this time, and use the other spar I bought from Stan Weiss. It will be better than the first one.

Bending the first skin

I'm pretty much done float sanding both sides of the elevator. I think it's been a couple weeks now. Not every night, but I've spent some real time on it. It seems to be one of those things you can never be completely satisfied with. I spent a couple hours knocking together a mandrel to bend the leading edge skins over. It's just a long stick holding a row of leading edge ribs made of scrap wood. The bending involves a lot of wrestling, clamping, wet plywood and sometimes steam, and I'd rather do it this way than bend the skin over the actual elevator. I figured I've beat on the poor thing enough as it is by breaking ribs off and knocking it into the walls as I carry it around the shop. Last night I bent the first skin around the mandrel and it's drying now. I'm hoping it will dry very close to the final shape of the elevator, leaving only the tiniest gaps, eliminating any shortcomings with clamping pressure when the gluing begins.

I bought a wood moisture meter and thermometer/hygrometer that now sits on the garage wall. The values go up and down from day to day, although I don't know if there's much that I'll do about it. I suppose skinning when it's not too dry is all I can manage without buying a humidifier.

If there's one lesson I've learned with the float sanding, it's that I shouldn't expect it to make up for subpar construction (such as misaligned ribs, or ribs that are slightly too small) just as I shouldn't expect the fillers in the plywood skins to make up for subpar float sanding. Each layer covers the sins underneath, but those sins just emerge later as many more hours of work. If there is a greater precision in the framing of the skeleton, the sanding will be far easier.

Meanwhile, I tried building a scarfing jig with a router- the first version of which tore the plywood to smithereens. I'm considering trying a laminate trimmer instead, or a sanding drum.