Order up!

It's almost sad how little material you get for an order ... I guess I did get several pounds of bolts this go-around, different from before.

This material is enough to finish off the cabanes, make the control stick assembly, and to make a test center-section so I can mount the cabanes and down-tube. After this, I'll be able to sit in my cockpit, wiggle the stick & pedals, and be fully enclosed like the final product will be!

I guess I didn't really pick up more material to clean up the nose section yet. I guess I'll get to that next order, sometime over the summer.

I started out by finishing up some pieces needed for the control stick assembly. This is where the belt sander really turned out to be useful. Such a long cut from sheet left a rough edge that would have taken an hour to file out by hand. Three minutes on the belt sander and the rough edge was super flat and no nicks were to be seen!

I haven't drilled these yet because I'm going to match-drill a bunch of these holes. The end pieces (triangular ones) will get bolted into the first hole and then I'll drill through the other hole to ensure I get a good fit. This also makes sure the holes are parallel between the two sides.

The plans show the final arrangement of the control stick assembly.

I should note, I had to redo two parts from the next page of the plans due to mis-dimensioning. They should be made from 1-1/8" x 1-1/8" angle, not 1-1/8" x 1".

The control stick as it sits in my living room. I still need to put on the aileron connection pieces and bend the (not shown) front mounting piece into a U. That comes when I have time. Oh, you can see here to the lower left the two brackets I had to redo. Bugger parts...

Out!