Maybe a Beer Fridge?

Posted byThe MonologuerPosted inUncategorized

It’s been nearly a month since my last post and I’ll be honest – after spending my entire day in front of a computer adulting – it’s been tough to scrap my butt back into a chair with a keyboard in the evenings. My afterwork glass of wine intake has also increased in both frequency and quantity leading to Netflix being the only pixels I tolerate. Queen’s Gambit, by the way, was really beautiful – SPOILER ALERT – only slightly tainted, in my opinion, with the faint sprinkle of a Disney flavoured lead up to the ending. Lately, when I poke my head out the garage door, Troy’s usually sanding, scrubbing, or filing a piece of metal and both the radio and compressor are blaring loudly. He’s done quite a bit in a month but there’s also been a pause in the build.

As you know, we live in a part of the world where “winter is coming”. Despite adding insulation to the garage doors, additional heat would be needed in order to keep the airplane workshop at a comfortable temperature in the coming months. Bringing in an additional 100 Amp service to just the garage required the power to be turned off to the house for most of a Friday. Preparing the garage for this work meant pausing any new progress on the airplane and moving all of the delicate sheets of aluminum out of the way.

Prior to bringing more power to the house – Troy had actually completed the bulk of the vertical stabilizer and rudder assembly.

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In addition to building the airplane, Troy’s had to build a number of things that are needed to facilitate certain steps. One of these included a cradle to hold the vertical stabilizer. Wrapping the carefully prepared skin to the spars and ribs of the stabilizer is a delicate procedure, lining up each of the holes and placing a Cleco clamp to hold parts in place. You can appreciate the precision needed as there is no room or flexibility for fudging hole placement.
The rudder – recall that before these photos – every piece is drilled, de-burred, dimpled, primed. The structural support inside the rudder is made up of stiffeners (which are those long thing pieces attached to the skin) and a shear clip – two stiffeners and the shear clip form the triangle support inside the rudder. The knife edge to the rudder utilized double flushed rivets applied with an angular squeezer – a very important detail to ensure smooth airflow during all phases of flight.

After the team of electricians completed their task, we also needed to find a garage door repairman and have the side of the house re-sodded due to some collateral damage (which the electrician graciously covered). To add salt to the wound, the heater didn’t work when Troy plugged it into his newly powered workshop. After exchanging the heater at our local Canadian Tire, a second failure to launch led to the head electrician coming back out to the house to connect some wires his underlings did not. 100 Amps directly to the garage meant his car charger, heater and tools could all be powered safely, while also preparing for the day that I perhaps may switch over to an electric vehicle.

After that ordeal, I looked at Troy and said, “so technically, now, you actually CAN have a beer fridge out here.”

Yay! Finished pieces!

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