rankamateur

Are you test flying yet Guy? Hope you are taking some video for us, hint hint.

But when the weather report was way off, and the wind was 120 degrees out, didn't your instructor turn on the GPS to confirm that the signs on the ground were what you said they were, on your cross country training? Mine did.

The flight manual for your plane is buried in the very back of you instruction manual behind the spare parts manual.

The rivnuts that came with my kit are flush head, but the ones that came with the rivnut pliers have a proud boss when finished, they also need a lot larger hole drilled. Make sure you are using the correct rivnuts.

The head doesn't pull flat! It does press on the sheet all the way around when it is pulled in a hole on a curved surface so the is some deformation as the rivet is pulled.

I joined a member organisation but in the short few years I have been involved it has sadly changed, the procession of staff stepping out of RAA into jobs in CASA seems to have also been a feature of that period too.

I have too many hours invested to give it away, I will just have to suck it up, step back into the fold, be a good boy, do what I am told by my monopoly licencing authority and fly aeroplanes. A visit or just a refuel stop over is always doable, just drop me a message.

I didn't renew my membership last year in protest, my print magazine was the reason I kept up my membership since I wasn't in a position to use my flying privileges, and I was feeling that the new direction was starting to look like the old directions all over again. In just a year of not reading my magazine cover to cover it is shocking how out of touch I feel I have become. I now have to decide wether to step back into the fold, or mount my plane on a pole in the garden.

Interesting fuel tanks. What holds them down?

If you look at the can there is a label but the applicable information has been written over with a black permanent marker, so somebody knows who makes it but you and I are not meant to need to know.

I gave you what I had and you didn't like it, can't do anymore for you than that. I have assisted Aerokits in six kit builds prior to building my own, he has built four others leading upto and during that time. I guess I am happy to believe what he says.

Reg calls them Avex I think.

Put the stem solidly in the vice and cut through with and abrasive thin disc?

Excellent solution, of course you can do that because they are multi pull rivets and the blind seal is not critical. Why didn't somebody suggest that earlier?

Take it easy, I bought my engine when I bought my kit, spent a lot more time working on everything but my plane build for nearly three years, now I need my engine and I have three years of my fifteen years engine life already used. The way CASA are walking all over RAA, homebuilts will be having fifteen year old engines ripped out by the time it has run time.

Absolutely they can. I saw one with 1200 hours on it about a month ago that has had the doors off for most of that time used for spotting goats. It was a bit dirty inside though.

You have to hold your mouth right when you are doing solid rivets and it was a lot easier before I needed glasses, than it was after. I used solid rivets across my dash board too, still have the butt end of the three A4 rivets in the middle though. Also on the four mounting plates around engine cowl fixtures, but I needed the extra reach jaws in the tool to reach them. There were enough solid rivets supplied to do all that and still had some over, Pity they weren't as generous with the regular A4 rivets.

I only had trouble with the second rivet, there was room for the first one. I used a standard rivet for the second one, put it in beside the first and applied more than normal pressure to the gun as I pulled it and it pulled up straight on the second attempt, drilled the first one out. Then did the other ribs the same. I think you will have a bit of the same trouble on the flaperon ribs too from memory.

Didn't your manual tell you to use water pump pliers? I used Reg's tool which I think he bought in Brisbane so try sending him an email. I think the sticker with their name on it rubbed off on a hot sweaty day about four years ago but he will remember were it came from.

I haven't read the pats list, sorry. Don't know what the silver bit would be called, just wanted you to grind the right part.

Forgot to tell you that the first thing to do to you air riveter is to grind the silver tube that hold the "nose piece" as you call it, flat for about two inches on the top side, but make sure the silver tube is tightened right up before you judge where the top is. You can grind into it until you can just see through to the plunger that grips the rivet stem. There are quite a few places it will then fit into properly.

Not a Maule! Win news said it was a Cessna, who would have thought?

The rivet rows on the lower and left hand skin show where the angulars are installed to support the battery tray.

I used some surplus angulars from the area around the extra fuel tanks and fixed them between the fames either side of the door. Trouble is once you put the battery in there is very little room to reach in and do up the retainer bolt, hence the need to swap the door to the opposite side. Photo coming soon.

My job is suitable for inland. If I lived and flew mostly on the coast I would have deburred then alodined everything, and probably also used that poisonous chromate primer. It is a case of horses for courses. The black has to go on both mating surfaces and allow to dry well. If you choose to just use etch primer you will get working on the rivets at joints especially where pivot points are involved like where the elevator and rudder pivots attach.