Haven't posted an update in almost a week! Oops. It's been a weird few days... not that we haven't been working on the plane, but we haven't really made much visible or reportable progress on any one thing.
We'll cough up the non-building excuses first: Thursday last week we flew the Archer from KIIB up to KMCW for a "Third Thursday" cookout and met up with our friend Martin in his Bonanza. Had a great time up there as usual and then flew down to Marion to hangar the plane near home for the weekend. I've been working off-and-on on a side-project for my dad also that's been taking some time. Yesterday morning I participated in my first Young Eagles event as part of our local EAA chapter hosting an airport staff/friends/family event at KCID. There wasn't a huge turnout, only maybe a dozen families at most for 10 planes, so I only took one passenger load-- a mom and her ~11 year old daughter. The mom seemed to have fun but unfortunately the little girl didn't enjoy her first ride in a plane as much as I had hoped she would. It was a bit bumpy out that morning, and some of the gusts even caught me by surprise a bit. So, after a quick shot over downtown Cedar Rapids we made a quick dash back to the airport with a teary-eyed girl in the backseat :-( Oh well, at least no one got sick... Hopefully the next event will yield more visitors, smoother air, happier passengers, and inspire some future pilots!
On the days in between all that though, some decent progress was made. I deburred and dimpled all the parts that Derek and I prepped last Tuesday. I rebuilt my "tailwheel" to be a bit more robust and have the tail sit a bit higher so the fuselage is more level. I've begun work on my instrument panel to try and figure out what is going to go where. So far, here's my plan for the panel. Aside from some lights and switches, there will be four "big ticket" items on the panel itself: A dual-screen 10" G3X Touch system, GMC307 control panel, and GRT Mini-X as a backup EFIS. On the lower center console, I'll put my audio panel and navigators, possibly one or two GNS430W's, or an SL30... or if I win the lottery a GTN750/650 stack. We'll see. It's sort of depressing how expensive this stuff is. Even obsolete units are many thousands of dollars. Never thought that "going cheap" still meant spending $20k! Ha. Regardless for what I end up with though, there should be room for any of the above, so we're good there.
In addition to the above, I also made cutouts in the fuse bottom skins under the steps for some access panels. I realize most people put access covers in the baggage floor on the inside and not on the outside, but I wanted to do this a bit differently and also equip the cover with puddle lights to illuminate below the steps. Hopefully that all goes to plan. My Panduit solid corrugated tubing arrived from CableOrganizer.com. I'll be running two 1" tubes from aft of the baggage area to forward of the rear seats, past the new access holes and the steps. Speaking of the steps, I got them back from the powdercoaters, they look awesome! I also received my TCW Step Bushings in the mail, so I think we're getting pretty close to buttoning up the first half of Section 33 (the second half requires you to have the rear seat and baggage floor panels installed... which requires steps to be installed and wiring conduits run).
Lastly, I've started dabbling all over the plans, working on section [mumbles]30-something. Started on the baggage door. Started planning for the fuel and brake lines, location of the parking brake valve and fuel selector valve, and tallying all the lines and fittings that need to be made. Pestered Paul Grimstad at Control Approach one more time about his rudder pedal system. He's working frantically on getting a prototype completed and will be ready to ship "soon". I've got plenty to work on before I "need" them for sure but I'd like to get them here sooner rather than later if possible. Started on the access covers and floor panels section, particularly for the tunnel cover. Got a few random parts in the mail including a clear brake reservoir (Matco) and a ground power connector (Cessna-style).
All of this feels like I'm going in 100 different directions and nothing is complete yet. There are a lot of inter-dependencies on things being complete before work can start on the next thing, etc etc. Hopefully a lot of that will get sorted out in the coming week. Until then... maybe we'll have some pics and noteworthy progress in our next installment!