When ever I talk to a builder of an aircraft, they always tell me that much more time is spent planning than building. The question is, how much time is invested in planning? Well, for those who might one day read this blog with the idea of building their own aircraft of the caliber, I'll be logging those hours here to give you an idea.
Todays first stop was the local Staples store. They took my plans and promised to enlarge the two scale design diagrams to full-size according to the dimensions on the paper. I pick them up tomorrow and hopefully they will be right, but for $11 total I wont be too upset if it doesn't work out.
I also took out the micrometer and measured everything I received in the kit. For this part of the kit, I'm going to build a practice rudder with the same materials first, then build the actual rudder with the materials from the kit manufacturer. I went to an online metal supplier and ordered all the same tubes and sheet metal, all 6061-T6 "aircraft grade" aluminum, that came with the kit. The price of the metal was about half of the cost of the entire rudder kit, so I am feeling much better about the cost of the kit being reasonable. With some stainless steel rivets from Fastenal that I purchased yesterday and a few pieces of bolt hardware, I have almost an entire second kit to practice with.
Preparation time = 1.5 hours
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