Trial Fit

After a great KC Strip steak at the Stearman Cafe tonight, I decided to spend a few minutes in the hangar and trial fit the vertical tail and rudder onto the fuselage.  Everything lined up perfectly.  A few shots of the final product are below.  You will note there are still some unpacked boxes in the background, but the plan is to have them empty by mid March so we can paint the floor over spring break - temperatures permitting.  You will also note on the wall in the background I have a place to display some of my airplane pictures.  Yea!

One of the next tasks will be to prime these items and a few others.

Tail Repairs Complete

I took another day of vacation today and returned to Halstead, Kansas to complete the sheet metal work on the vertical tail and rudder.  Mark did a great job on all of this.  It was especially challenging to get the bucking bar up inside the vertical tail to buck the rivets of the lap splice.  However, he finally succeeded though his hands were probably pretty sore.  Everything looks great, much better than before.

 Mark eyeballs the top cap of the rudder before drilling

holes for the rivets.  You can see the replacement skin on

the vertical tail is on, except for the top rib attachment.

 Vertical tail complete.

Top of rudder complete.

Re-Skin in the Game

I took a day of vacation today and went to Halstead, Kansas to work with Mark Wiebe on the vertical tail and rudder for 98K.  As you may recall from an earlier post, 98K flipped over in a wind storm in the mid 1960's.  I assume some of the patches and dents on the tail are a left over from that event.  Either Mark or Wade (maybe both) had suggested the airplane would look a lot nicer with the upper portion of the skin on the vertical tail replaced.  The upper rudder needed the same treatment. 

I ordered much of the material, such as new ribs and new upper rudder skins from Univar.  The upper skin on the vertical would need to be made from scratch.  We got the upper rudder done fairly quickly since we had all the replacement parts.  The vertical tail took longer.  In fact, we ran out of time so I hope to return Friday to complete things.  Here are a few pictures of the work in progress with captions:

Vertical Tail - three patches plus a big crease.  Ugh!

 We had to "roll our own" leading edge.  This is a tool

Mark made to do that job.  The new skin is sandwiched

between the steel rod and the aluminum piece with screws

 to hold the new skin in place.  You then roll it.

 Mark rolling the leading edge.

 The completed roll,

 One side installed with clecoes for now.  There were a lot of

rivets to drill out, parts to measure and make, and many other
 details that a craftsman like Mark makes look easy! 

A Meyers OTW, metal fuselage and flaps, everything

else is fabric.  Mark is installing a 220 HP Continental

in place of the 160 HP Kinner.  Only 102 of these were built.