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UltraFun AirSports |
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1/25/03. My fuselage arrives, delivered in person by Jay
Williams. He made a deal with a Colorado T-51 customer to meet him
at my house, which is why you see the T-51 fuselage and center section
sitting next to my fuselage. The guys from CO arrived several
hours ahead of Jay, so we hangar-talked until he showed up. This
is the first T-51 kit delivered to a customer.
Jay checked over my wing, gave me some pointers, and headed back on the road for another 945 miles back home. A long trip indeed. |
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It got awfully crowded in my 10X20 bubble with the fuselage in there also. For now, I'll move the wing outside the shop area and skin it when the weather gets warmer. | ||
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1/29/03. 2 evenings work, and it doesn't look like I've accomplished much. In fact, since I first put the seat cushions in and put the nosecone on to trim for the pod tabs, it looks less complete than before. If you look closely, you'll see that the control sticks and throttle are now in, as well as the adjustment for the rudder pedals. I was sent the wrong pedals so those have to be replaced. | ||
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I guess my pedals are correct, and the drawings for the S toe brakes are mislabeled. :>( I went ahead and put in the pedals with the heel brakes. Here's a shot of the front pedals. Having a black fuselage sure hampers the detail in a photo. | ||
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Here's the rear rudder pedals with the heel brakes. BTW, the sawhorses pictured are perfect for working on the fuselage. Being plastic, they don't mar the underside, and there's a groove in the top for the luggage tabs to sit in. Perfect height, too. | ||
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1/31/03. Another problem. The height of the master cylinder is higher than where the lever will sit on the nylon bushing. This is a picture of the port side master cylinder. You can see the lever is about 3/8" too high. | ||
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Another picture of the same problem. | ||
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Here's the other side. This time, I tightened down the arm on the pivot side, and left the master cylinder unhooked. The difference so so much, that the master cylinder clevis can easily sit on top of the lever arm. | ||
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2/1/03. Debbie spent the afternoon helping me with the brake and rudder cables. It's pretty nice to have your significant other spend time building an airplane with you. :>) | |
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We finished the brake and rudder cables. It was up past 50 degrees today, so the shop heater was able to keep it warm inside. I decided to work on the belly skins, so we turned the fuselage upside down. The sawhorse on one side and the milk crate on the other made a perfect height for belly skin work. | ||
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The kit comes with this huge sheet of aluminum. If you look closely, you can see the lines where the belly skins need to be cut out. | ||
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Starting on the belly skins. I got a rivet fan spacing tool. Works great. | ||
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Lining up clecoes like toy soldiers. | ||
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A halogen light made things pretty bright, as well as heat up the aluminum quite a bit. After everything was nailed down and the light removed, the skin became really tight with no tenancy of oil canning. | ||
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Rear bottom skin complete. I'll have to do something about the rear belly skin overlap. It sticks up a little since the rear skin angles down. | ||
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Out of clecoes! There's 160 of them in this picture. I need another hundred or so. | ||
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After heating up the skins from the outside, I came up with the idea of just putting the lights under the fuselage. Everything heated up just great, and the skins came out tight after we started doing this. | ||
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2/4/03. The front skin is drilled and clecoed on. 95 hours. | ||
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