Author Archives: bfay500
Fuel Tanks – Section 18-05 To 18-09 – Complete – 35 Hours
It’s been a while because….this took a while. A big hurdle is now complete: the fuel tanks! I left off with riveting the skins to the tank ribs. Well, this just simply took a long time. Once complete, I went over it 6-7 times to make sure every possible place of leakage was covered with […]
Fuel Tanks – Section 18-01 to 18-05 – Partially Complete – 45 hours
Well, here it is. The section we have been waiting for and anticipating for. The fuel tanks. I sort of set aside 6 months to do this but at this point, I think that was way overestimating the time needed. However, this doesn’t trivialize the work needed to complete this section. First of all, the […]
Outboard Leading Edges – Section 17 – 39 Hours – Partially Complete
This section deals with assembling the outer leading edges which makes up half of the forward part of the wing. The inner leading edges are actually the fuel tanks which will be done in the next section. Like the wings, the ribs are fluted, final drilled, deburred (all the nooks and crannies) and then laid […]
Top Wing Skins – Section 16 – 29 Hours – Complete
This section of the plans only covered 3 pages but the density of the work was probably the highest so far. Section 16 is attaching the top skins, essentially 2 large sheets of aluminum, to the framework completed in Section 15. I did a rough estimate of the number of rivets, and it totaled about […]
REAR SPAR – Section 15 – 14 Hours – Complete
This section consisted of 3 pages so I thought I would be able to crank this out over a weekend. Well, I always seem to forget the 6 cardinal rules of building an airplane: 1. deburr edges2. cleco everything together3. match drill and/or final drill4. take everything apart5. deburr all the holes6. cleco everything back […]
Wing Ribs – Section 14 – 28 Hours – Complete
This was one of those sections where it seemed like you do a ton of work but nothing seems to get done and then everything seems to be done at once. The ton of work was due to the deburring of all these wing ribs – 28 of them. I tried various methods including “flossing” […]
Section 13 – Main Spar – 20 Hours – Complete
A new phase in the assembly has started: The Wings. It started with my favorite activity. Unwrapping all the parts and organizing them onto shelves. It is better than Christmas morning as a kid. I prepared for this by adding another shelving unit because I guessed (correctly) that there are a lot more parts involved […]
Section 12 – Empennage Fairings – Partially Complete – 6 Hours
This is the final section of the Empennage which is where I attach the fairings to the empennage pieces. Looking through the plans, some of it does not get completed until much later – after all the empennage parts are permanently attached to the airplane. I also had an impending delivery of the wing kit […]
Empennage Attach – Section 11 – 5 hours – Partially Complete
Section 11 seemed like it was just marking time until the wing kit arrives. It basically is the step where you attach the empennage pieces (rudder, vertical stabilizer, horizontal stabilizer, and elevator) to the aft fuselage. It talks you through the entire attachment steps; however, I am not doing this permanently until much later. For […]
Aft Fuselage – Section 10-22 to 10-33 Complete – 16.5 hours
This seems to be a post that is actually taking longer to write than the parts shown below to assemble. At long last, I was about to put Section 10 to bed with the completion of the Aft Fuselage. After leaving off the previous, the next step was to cleco the aft deck to the […]
The Fay's RV-14A N124KB 