aviator79's build

[aviator79]

I drilled, glued and riveted the lift strut attach brackets. At first, Hysol is not the easiest stuff to work with. I thougt it would be more of a liquid, but it's a much pastier consistency. This makes measuring the resin and hardener a little more difficult than I thought.

I think maybe I used too much on the first one.


Cleans up nice with some denatured alcohol though:


It's nice to have someone pull clecos while someone else rivets:


Maybe not quite enough Hysol on the second try. I didn't get as much squish-out as I'd like, so I went back and filleted the perimeter with more. Also, I had a moment of panic: The hole on the left between the bracket ears was impossible to get at with a rivet gun. I have a manual and a pneumatic, but neither one could grip the rivet mandrel between the bracket ears. Eventually I took a bench grinder to my manual rivet gun to make it fit between the bracket ears. To my relief, it worked beautifully. It also taught me a lesson in thinking through any hole's entire lifecycle prior to drilling it.

[colospace]

Just curious. You received the kit on the 29th, and it looks like you already have the tanks installed?!

[Esser]

I think the factory does rigging now which may include installing the tanks and the butt rib

[aviator79]

My factory pre-rig did include a bit more to help assure that all my hysol cures in a temp-controlled environment. (I can't let anything cure with the wings on in my small garage.) This also did get me off to a fast start on the wings.

[David47]

Good luck with the build Aviator79 and wish you well on the journey. It's good to see yet another KF builder joining the ranks.

[efwd]

Man, every time someone posts a pic of the wing struts, rigging etc. My heart rate goes up. Doing all that was stressful for me. I so did not want to mess that up and as a result I stressed out.

[aviator79]

I'm going to varnish my butt ribs, and was curious what application technique you guys used. Does spray application give substantially better results? The polyfiber manual specifies using a brush for the first coat and says that a spray gun may be used for subsequent coats. I'm just curious if it's worth setting up and cleaning my spray gun for two ribs.

For that matter, did you spray varnish the rest of the ribs? It seems it would make shorter work of the task, but you might get varnish all kinds of places you don't really need it.