Aargh everything is getting so itchy!

I woke up Thursday morning with a big rash on my right hand, which was annoying.  So we decided it was time to head back to London for a weekend that night.  Anyway I didn't sleep very well Thursday night as my face was itchy, and now it's one big raised face-mask shaped red blob.  Which wouldn't be half as bad if it weren't extremely, incredibly ITCHY!

Anyway since we've got a nice fast web connection in London I did a little bit of research into my rash & it's sorta fascinating - I think of glass fibre threads as being a bit like nettle prickles, in that they're tiny silicon needles that in this case inject formaldehyde under your skin.  So maybe this big face rash is just a sign that I'm pickling well and I will retain my current youthful(-ish) looks for the rest of my life!

Firewall prepped but still no engine installed!

We've spent the last few days installing the firewall (the steel sheet that separates the cabin from all the hot combustion taking place at the front of the plane) and the bits and pieces that bolt onto it.  This has meant spray painting some fibreglass parts so that they don't look too awful when oil starts dripping on them, spending what seems like hours trying to drill holes through the steel plate and blunting several drill bits, and figuring out exactly from where they make those precise measurements, listed in the instruction manual.... and yet still getting the holes in the wrong places.  Oh well Gary hasn't said anything about one of my 2 inch wide holes being a handspan closer to the middle of the plane than it appears to be in the manual.  Progress seems a bit frustratingly slow at times.

Now we're going to do a whole heap of jobs inside the cabin from later in the manual, as Gary is pretty busy and we need his help to put the engine on.

Plane flipping!

is not as easy as it sounds.....

But at least our plane is now sitting on 2 of it's 3 wheels, up the right way and generally looking a bit like a small plane, that some small child has torn the wings off.

Next job putting all the 'under the bonnet' equipment in, in the hope that we will soon be able to fly it!

Fancy bolts

Sometimes I wonder why planes can't be as mechanically simple as my bicycle, but I think I know the reason for that!  Today I spent many hours bolting the disk brakes & associated bits onto the main legs and then quite a long time fiddling around to fit the main legs onto the underside of the plane, at which point they become the undercarriage.  This was a pretty short day's work, but it really looks like we've achieved something.

Ducks love rain!

We went to see Gary, our build supervisor, as we needed to use his hydraulic press in order to press the wheel bearings into the hubs.  I have now learnt that ball bearings are so labelled because they are unusual, bearings are usually a very smooth cylinder which provides very little friction to the axle that goes through them.  Ball bearings can be added to things provide a smooth movement.  Fascinating, who would have guessed.  Certainly not me when I was tearing my hair out yesterday trying to find spherical bearings!

Yesterday I spent some time putting together the main legs of the plane, which meant assembling and attaching the disk brake structures and trying with my hammer to do those hand brass rivets to attach the brake pads to their brake pad backings - my bike sure isn't this complicated!  Anyway Gary had the correct tools (punches) to make light work of these rivets so he and I did them whilst Julian went back to our factory unit to pick up some parts we'd forgotten.  Well, I say we did them, I spent a lot of time staring in fascination at his assorted fowl.  It was raining and the ducks were having a fantastic time puddling and straining the mud through their beaks.  I don't know why they say 'as happy as a pig in mud', as 'as happy as a duck in mud would be much more appropriate.  The chickens seemed fairly unconcerned by the rain and mud, which seemed a bit odd as some of them were feather footed varieties and were getting pretty muddy.  I had a bit of a wil-e-coyote moment whilst looking at the Buff Orpingtons - they're the biggest chickens I've ever seen, but I fear their current purchase price keeps them definitely off the dining table.

We had to rush away to keep our appointment with the gym memberships lady so that we can finally swim, yoga and, most importantly, shower!  Hurrah!

Si j'avais un marteau....

je ferais toc toc toc (If I had a hammer I would make 'bang bang bang'): Clou Clou for the amateurs of French chanson.

Today we did a lot  of the old toc toc tocing.  And we were fibreglassing until 9pm.

Nuf said.

Working on the plane's tail

Today was a big day of working on the hinges joining the two horizontal bits of the tail (horizontal stabiliser & elevator).  Getting the hinges exactly straight so that the controls move easily is pretty tough, as is the process of attaching them.  This is a process called flocking which I think we'll be doing a lot more of in the future: first you rough up the surfaces to be joined, then clean them down with acetone, then a thin layer of mixed up epoxy resin (e.g. Araldite) on both sides.  Then a really fine cotton powder (flock) is mixed into the resin until it becomes really stiff, probably a bit less like egg whites and more like really solid marshmallows, this is put on one surface and they are pushed together.  Of course that is not enough to adequately join a load bearing surface like a hinge, so we pre drilled holes on the hinge, plugged up the middle ones so that they didn't get filled with glue and bolted up the outer ones.  The resin dries overnight.  The following day the plugs and bolts are removed using either force or for the metal items a heat gun to soften the epoxy allowing them to be unscrewed.  Then rivets are put through the holes (hard wrist action) and the lot cleaned up and checked for clean movement.....  We shall see.

Another trip back to Norfolk

After a couple of days off to gather our thoughts (and necessary belongings) we're back in Norfolk again.  It feels like it took forever to get out here.  We left at 11am and got in for 'lunch' at 3.30pm.  On the plus side this long trip meant that we took a short scenic driving tour past Ely Cathedral, which is apparently pretty famous, I just hadn't heard of it before.  Another reason the trip took so long is that we went up to Murray's - the guy who will be painting our plane, to pick up the undercarriage (legs) and noseleg which he has already painted - apparently it's easier to paint these things before they're bolted on.  The plus of going to Murray's is that it takes us past all the good farm stalls, and some great eggs produced by back yard chickens.  This means that we managed to pick up Julian's favourite lunch and dinner side dish ingredient: brussel sprouts on the stalk.  I feel a bit like I've created a monster in introducing him to really fresh lightly cooked brussels, but it's too late now!

Apparently in the past people in Norfolk dug all their ground away  in the process of collecting peat for fires.  I also read that the smell is so bad that people have been put to death for burning it in the past.  Anyway all this dig dig digging created the Norfolk fens, low lying wet areas, which have now been dried out, but on days like today when a huge snow fall has finally melted some areas like the road to Wisbech are surrounded by vast still lakes rather than  fields.  It was really quite strange.  The road was officially closed due to flooding but we saw a delivery truck come through, so gritted our teeth & just didn't stop and it really wasn't too deep for a normal car.

After Murray's we went into town to the gym to learn about membership and using the swimming pool, we just have to work out what type of membership works best for our 3 month project!  So it really was quite a productive drive up even if we didn't get much done on the plane after arriving.

Back to Norfolk

This may end up a frequent post title....  The weather is a bit dismal.  All very overcast.  We got back to Norfolk on Wednesday and have spent a lot of time just setting up the factory unit.  We are very lucky in that it is brand new and a good size; I'm guessing about 12 x 12m with a tea corner with a great hot water service, massive disabled bathroom which is about the same size as the adjoining office area.  It's funny but the only car park attached to our unit is a disabled one, so I hope we don't get booked for using it!

Progress has felt a little slow.  We've built up the two desks, one as a work bench and the other as a kitchen area.  We've opened all the boxes and spent hours checking that we have pretty much all the parts we were meant to have received, apart from a few things that have sounded mysterious but small, e.g. 4 zinc screws were listed separately - we have bags and boxes of screws & bolts everywhere -  it could be any number of innumerable bags!

The plane came boxed in 3 plywood boxes, so we've taken the lids of most (except for the engine, which is proving to be a handy extra table), and broken them down or leaned them against the walls so that we don't muck up the nice paint job.  I've made one of the into a kind of shadow board without the shadows if you can imagine it - so really it's just a heap of screws in different places so that I can hang the thing I thing are important.  This is working pretty well for the hammer & mallet (very recognisable), but I forsee future confusion being caused by the six tape affixing screws.

And that is really about it.  We've taken the main body of the plane out of its box and laid it down on its roof on a couple of old synthetic doonas and done a lot of pfaffing about trying to mark a centre line exactly central and worrying about drilling holes in the wrong position - we have made some cuts and filed them out, but it all seems a bit piddling at the moment.

Our plane arrives....

We arrived back in the UK on Tuesday and have been hassling the council for several days to get the paperwork together so that we can finally move into our factory unit and take delivery of our kit.  The worst snow in 50 years is keeping country council workers confined to their homes, as the only businesses profiting from the current weather are car repair shops.  Luckily our contact's boss was able to sort things out for us.  So at five pm (i.e. pitch black) and in the snow we moved the heavy crates in.  Well the boys did - I just videoed the lot.