Had a good weekend - on Sunday I cut out & bent the rear skins (made them a bit oversize in span so I can cut the ends to fit), drilled and clecoed them to the skeleton on Tuesday evening.

Yesterday I had a couple of free hours, cut out the front skins and got one taped on.

I love front skins.   A simple rectangular piece of metal, give it a bit of a bend, and all of a sudden you've got a complete airfoil shape.  Fantastic!

After pulling my air riveter to bits and removing the 6 jammed rivet pins stuck in it, I riveted most of the skeleton together.  Didn't rivet the hinge pins, thought it might be easier to remove them to drill the holes for the split pins...

On to the rear skins next - can't wait.

A good evening in the shed tonight!

 

I'd been having difficulty sourcing a suitable piano hinge for the trim tab.  While the Zenith one is entirely reasonable at about $21, it would have cost $108 for postage to Australia.

Finally tracked one down locally today - it's stainless steel instead of aluminium, but because of the thickness (about 0.025") it's light enough for the purpose.  I intend to well and truly coat it with an anti-corrosive paint to avoid any corrosion…

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Finally got a chance to see my local sheet metal bloke, so got him to bend some pieces - the elevator spar, trim tab spar, and the trim tab itself.  He did a superb job on the trim tab - bent it up from one piece of 0.016" with 3 bends.  Note that the trim tab assembly on this 701 is based on the 750 style - full port elevator span, inset into the trailing edge.  (I believe the 701 tab is a flat plate hinged to the existing soft-riveted TE - correct me if I'm wrong!)  Anyway, as I've said on…

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Just spent a pleasant couple of hours down in the shed, making the elevator rear ribs (including a modified one for the side with the trim tab), and elevator rear channel.

Very glad I've got a wood heater in the shed - when I came back to the house I noticed the cars were iced over and the grass was considerably more crunchy than usual underfoot!

Didn't take the camera with me but will take some pics soon.  I'll take the elevator spar to a sheet metal worker up the road to have…

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Currently on holiday in Bendigo (Vic, Australia) so dropped in to Bendigo Airport where Allan Barton has his beautiful 750 and 601.  Allan very kindly took me up for a flight in his 750, which has inspired me to redouble my efforts on my scratch-built 701.

The plane flew beautifully, especially impressed with the digital instrumentation and "professional" extras such as carby heat, boost etc.

The aircraft is surprisingly roomy with the bubble doors, which I'll be getting too. …

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I've been too busy building to bother adding posts!  Anyways, cut out the skin, drilled, made the front and rear supports, clecoed the skin back on, marked out the front slot and slots for front supports, took the skin off, cut the slots, deburred everything, painted joint areas with primer and riveted the supports (7H2-6 and 7H2-7, I think they are) into place.

Today I put the skin back on (obviously had to cleco the curved side first, in order to slip over the front supports),…

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I borrowed some flanging dies from a fellow 701 builder here in Tassie (thanks James!)  5 minutes work with a car jack and the holes were done.

Assembled and riveted the skeleton. 

Fabricated and installed the upper mounting points.  Also riveted the control horn/lower mounting point, and the upper & lower spar fairings.  

Stupidly I decided to hand rivet the upper mounting points... "It's hardly worth starting the compressor for 8 rivets..." yeah right, they're A5 and take a bit more force than A4's.  Wised up and air riveted the rest.

That should be it for the rudder apart from trimming the nose skin to clear the elevator.  I'll leave that until the…

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Over the last couple of evenings I got busy - cut and bent the rudder skins, marked, drilled, clecoed, drilled, unclecoed, trimmed... and today I deburred, Scotchbrited, primed, and finally riveted everything together.

It was a pleasure to use the air riveter for the first time - I may never pull a rivet manually again...!

 

Cut out the 0.025 stab rear spar & the elevator spar (the Olfa knife certainly makes it easier!) Continue

I bought Jon Croke's excellent DVD on scratch building, which gave me heaps of ideas and methods that I probably wouldn't have thought of myself.

Made a bending brake just out of a hinged piece of Tas Oak on the side of the workbench (with another piece on the top which has an aluminium strip screwed to the edge with a 3mm routed edge for bending). At the moment I just screw this to the workbench when bending something, but have just bought a very stiff length of square section extrusion… Continue

Finally bit the bullet and started. Drew up curvy bits such as wing, stabilizer and rudder ribs on CAD. Printed them out 1:1 scale and traced them on to the 6061-T6. Only done the 0.016" bits so far (oh and the 0.025" spar webs), but it was good to finally get some aluminium out and start work. Continue

I bought my aluminium and steel from Performance Metals (NSW) around a year ago, March 2009. Very impressed with the service from Performance Metals - they delivered quickly, the sheets were very well packed, and the Chupa Chups hidden in the package were a pleasant surprise! Continue