Flaps

Yesterday we took a short trip with some friends and two other planes to fly formation to KPDC for some delicious steak at Jones Black Angus across the street from the airport. It's a beautiful, scenic part of WI at the Mississippi and Wisconsin River delta, so we both highly recommend it as an excellent meal stop if you're ever in that area! We upped the ante a little bit this time too, and walked a half mile or so further north up the road to Quality Beverage to stock up on Spotted Cow. For those who've been to Airventure at Oshkosh, you may know of Spotted Cow as a delicious local beer that is not available outside the state of WI. We couldn't pass up the opportunity to get ahold of some!

Spotted Cow bootleggers Mike, Sarah, Alec, and Erica. Our friends Jonathan and Gretchen opted to stand on the other side of the camera :-)

Formation flight into the sunset, heading back to Iowa with the goods onboard. Unlikely pairing of two Piper Warriors and a Citabria!

All I will say about trips like these: This is the reason why we love to fly! We cannot WAIT to do many more trips like this in the -10 when it's done...

Anyway, tonight in the airplane factory it was time to get back to work. We cleaned up the garage a bit and got to work laying out all the parts for the flaps. Although the design is slightly different, they still appear to be quite similar to the ailerons, perhaps even a bit more straightforward. For tonight, once we got all the parts laid out, we completed the first few steps which involved marking and drilling a few #40 holes into the flap hinge brackets as well as final-drilling the inboard and outboard nose ribs with their doubler plates. It was simple and fun work that took us through page 22-3 step 2.

The L flap hinge brackets and nose ribs starting to come together

The R flap hinge brackets and nose ribs starting to come together

Our flap workstation, complete with Spotted Cow on the table ;-)

Getting to this part made for a natural stopping point and easy evening of building. This weekend, other than a few minor plans we will be hard at work on the flaps! Fuselage kit is scheduled to arrive on Wednesday next week, let's see how close we get!