Forward Fuse Work HOBBS 976.0 hrs

With this post, I am finally caught up. If you've been paying attention, the project HOBBS meter has been spiraling upward at a rather dizzying rate lately. I have logged 20.0 and 23.5 hrs the last two weeks, respectively. That's pretty good for me...as you know, I am attempting to average 15 hrs/week so this is outstanding progress and I'm thrilled. I am on a quest to get this baby flying!

I feel like the project feel is evolving, transforming into a seemingly never-ending task list of things to get done...much more systems, planning, research, routing and layout related. I have a funny feeling it will feel this way from here on out. Instead of following a very rote task list that was prevalent during the airframe construction, it now becomes lots and lots of little tasks to do that never seem to get finished entirely. Many times, you can't complete them since you have to wait for some other task to be completed later. Its rather frustrating to do all the prep work and fitting...get it ready for riveting, only for the plans to say...now set it off to the side and wait before final riveting later! d'oh!...that stings a little to read...lets get this puppy done dangit. :) I know..."patience grasshopper." In light of this, you probably noticed I am jumping around quite a bit now.

But, with all that being said. The last half of the fuse activity has been by far the most fun I have had so far on the project. I quite literally just get lost in the task at hand sometimes for hours. Outside my shop (garage), the world could be coming to an end and I wouldn't know or care. I enjoy those days...to escape into my own little world, devoid of the daily stress of life, finances, work and reality. Who needs yoga and meditation to relieve stress, quiet the mind and relax...just build an airplane! Therapy at its best....

So, back to the forward fuse. I put off some of the labor intensive projects ahead on this. Namely, cutting the many relief cuts in the angle alum to fit the contour of the instrument panel and sub-panel. I was kind of dreading this but it turned out to not be that bad and in the end, quite a lot of fun to do. I was pretty amazed at how well the angle's fit the contour once the relief cuts were added...pretty neat construction concept.

Here is the start of my static line routing and two ports on the side of the fuse. The plans say to use tie-wraps to secure the lines to the bulkhead...and that would work just fine, but I just like the more professional look of these adel clamps. I may take a couple of them out though as this is a little overkill to have that many.

And here is a shot of the entire tailfeathers mounted...the rudder being the last piece of the puzzle. It may look ugly with that wash primer and filler on it (I recently purchased some gray filler primer and I'll fix that shortly)...but to me, it was a thing of beauty to see it all installed for the first time on the fuse. Its looking more and more like an airplane every day!! KPR!