This week, Sasha and Peter emerge from quarantine to continue work!

“One month in Munich” turned into four months in Munich and two months in Mexico - crazy story all around. Here’s us in Merida as we were waiting for the status of Peter’s visa.

At any rate, we’re back and diving into work again! We’re currently dedicating one full day on the weekend (6-8 hours) and two weeknights (2-3 hours). This week, we wrapped up assembly of the empennage (everything except actually skinning it, since we’re still trying to figure out the electrical config on our end) and started the wings.

Everything is more or less going smoothly on that end - we’ve finally got a process down: deburr, clean, prekote (we got wipes!), prime, assemble. For the larger rivets (4.8 mm), Peter made a little video to demonstrate how to deburr the rivets themselves so that the rivets actually fit into the holes.

I managed to fall into a patch of poison oak last weekend so I’ve been fairly distracted through the build process. One night I spectacularly messed up an inspection hatch - installed the rivets backwards then messed up drilling them out, then scratched up our nice primer with pliers as I tried to pull the rivets out :)

Anyway, the challenges are ahead of us - the empennage manual specifically says to not install the strobe into the rudder if VOR is installed on the stabilizer and I’m not sure why and if this is something we should heed (since we would like both VOR and the strobe!). Also have to figure out how much wiring to leave inside the empennage and install the elevator trim tab. Then there’s going to be the fuel tanks and the wings!

Here’s some pictures of the rudder preparation and assembly process:

How have your winters been, gentle readers? Super productive or absolutely nothing done? How has quarantine impacted your build? Discussion is always welcome!