Tail, Prop, Wings, and N Number

Working at the hangar is not fun. Delay this move as much as possible.....I miss the shop.

Jess and I took a day off work and got to work on the plane together. We made good progress but the only picture I got was after we installed the stabilizers.

I was nervous about pulling the prop plug on the engine. But it turned out to be really ease. I just used a punch and hammered the center of the plug enough to bend it. Then used a strong magnet and it pulled out. Easy.

There was A LOT of work that happened from the above pics to the ones below. I had a day where I scrapped together as many guys I could find to help install the wings and any other help they were willing to provide. Brian U. flew over from Atlanta to give my a hand and I had a few other helpers. It was a really productive and exhausting day. Wings, flaps, rudder, some sound proofing, and several other things were finished up on this day.

Kris came by and we got the N numbers on the tail. They are vinyl "stickers". Really easy to put these on and its hard to tell its not paint.

Move to Hangar

The BIG DAY is here. Moving to the hangar! The fuselage will join the other parts at their new home.

Waiting for the tow truck.

Loaded and ready.......so nervous. I was so tense during the drive to the airport my neck muscles hurt. A good driver though he had to swerve a few times to narrowly miss low hanging tree branches. Whew.

Home....safe and sound.

Arm Rest

Working on the armrest wiring. I have all of my headset connections, a USB charge port, and music inputs in my arm rest. This results in a lot of wires in a small place. But it is a very convenient spot to locate these. All of the wires run to a disconnect so I can remove my console when needed.

Check out Stein videos for how to wire up the headset jacks. Really easy. Also if you are installing a carbon fiber (electrically conductive) console then you need the insulating washer you see in the background. 

The back of the headset jacks installed in the console.

Wired and ready to go.  (Cat not included)

Firewall Forward Pics

While the paint was drying I figured I'd get some good pics of the firewall forward stuff. I think at this point everything was installed.

Paint

I got the parts back from the painter. Very pretty. Metallic!...so sparkly! We hauled them back in a rented Penske truck to the hangar; another nerve racking drive.

Vertical Stabilizer and Rudder. The lines match up perfectly on the airplane.

One pretty wing!

I'm helping the painter as much as I can after work and on the weekends. We put up plastic around the shop and made it into a make-shift paint booth. Step one was high build primer, filling holes, more primer, more filling holes and a lot of sanding.

Then paint starts going on! It was really exciting seeing it painted.

We spent one VERY late evening taping off the plane. I owe a huge thanks to my buddy Kris for putting in some long hours on this effort. We pulled the white plane out into the yard and then, using the paint image Jess and I created, actually just projected it onto the airplane. Using a standard projector, at night of course, gave us really good guidance while taping it off. It was still A LOT of work to do this and very tedious. The tape goes on but the curve isn't perfect so you pull it off and try again....good, but at this point its not quite right so you pull it off and try again....not bad except right here.....ugh...try again.

Once we had the lines taped off  he sprayed the black.

Then the green and then the grey stripe. It was surreal having a finished plane sitting in my shop. It didn't look like some project anymore, but a real airplane.

Landing Lights and Rudder Cable Fairing

Being the first guy to install the Aveo Ziptips is neat but comes with growing pains. I didn't have any installation instructions and no one to ask questions. But it wasn't hard once you start laying things out....hell, after building an airplane you can figure anything out. But in case someone is following along and they still don't have install instructions here are some pictures.

The lights install on ribs that get glassed into place inside the wingtips.

Here is a side shot of the brackets.

I made my rudder cable fairing fancy with a rounded front edge.....why not.

"Come on Daddy lets go fly!"