It’s been a few weeks since my last update. I attended Airventure at Oshkosh, saw some cool EZ’s, met a few nice canard folks, saw the Starship, scoped out EFIS’s, and saw some really fancy flying! It was a great trip, until I broke a fever on the way home. Covid!! My first time! I guess it was bound to happen. I didn’t have the energy to work on the airplane while I was sick, but I’ve made some good progress in the last 2 weeks.
At my last inspection, I determined between the crushed foam, disbonding, and areas of total failure, the entire belly needed to be replaced. I began the surgery by removing the canopy, flight controls, and cutting out the front consoles. I then removed strips of the front floor inner skin near the longerons. My original plan was to cut vertically at the longerons, flip the plane over, and slowly cut away to expose the wood longerons once I could see what I was doing – then I came up with a better plan! I made a series of horizontal cuts with my multitool about every 8 inches directly under the longerons all the way through the outer skin. Once the airplane was upside down, I’d be able to just connect the dots! Easy Peasy!
After all the cuts were made, the next step was to flip her over; so I called in some reinforcements and we got her upside down in no time – took about 30 minutes with a 2×6 bolted to the right side wing attach bushings. Once upside down, I continued with my plan and used some masking tape to tape along the cuts, connecting the dots all the way down the side of the fuselage – this line should be flush with the bottom of the longeron. I also made a cut in front of the front seat bulkhead so I could remove the front floor first. I wasn’t sure how this would all work, so I chose to do it in two sections. My plan seemed to work well enough, so I repeated the process in the back to remove the rest of the floor. Now that it’s off, it’s clear there is more damage than originally thought. Ugh. The longerons between the pilot and pax bulkheads are largely fractured and splintered. I will need to replace the longerons between the two bulkheads.
After an hour of cutting with my sawzall and multi tool, my neighbors had enough! Knock-knock-knock on my garage door….my first noise complaint! Haha. Guess I’m done for the day. Luckily my neighbors are super chill, but I really need to get this bird into a hangar before I do much more cutting.
Saturday August, 10th – 4.75 hours
Saturday August, 17th – 2 hours
Sunday August, 18th – 1 hour
Leave a Reply