Experimenter

May 2013

Experimenter is a magazine created by EAA for people who build airplanes. We will report on amateur-built aircraft as well as ultralights and other light aircraft.

Issue link: http://experimenter.epubxp.com/i/126719

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I f I C a n D o T hi s kind of glue" and a really dull knife and set to work. In spite of my efforts at self-sabotage, the build actually progressed, after a fashion. I nearly gave up when, thanks to the aforementioned dull knife, I tore a piece of the tissue used to cover the horizontal stabilizer. Instead of trashing it then and there, though, I took a breath and managed to trim it and shape it until it looked like maybe it was supposed to be curved like that. Senior communications advisor Dick Knapinski and Project Lead Chad Jensen work on riveting the top fuselage skin. I had to double-back a couple of times when I misread the instructions, and the areas where I trimmed the tissue with the bad knife and used a bit too much of the wrong glue looked pretty rough, but mostly it came together. Until it came time to attach two tiny brass cylinders that were integral to the flapping mechanism, and I realized that the parts in the kit were the wrong size—one was too big, the other too small. I didn't realize this immediately, as my default assumption was that it must have been me who was mistaken, not the plans or the parts. Once I'd accepted it, though, and realized that I couldn't adapt the existing components and there was no way I was going to finish it in time, I'm not proud to say that I just got frustrated and gave up. Even though this was just a simple model aircraft, even unfinished it reinforced a few lessons I'd learned on our full-scale build. First, not every mistake is an automatic disaster: the curve that I added to the tail feathers to hide the fact that I'd torn the tissue paper by hacking at it with my near-useless blade actually looks pretty good. Would I simply reshape a part on our Zenith CH 750 build if I'd banged it up? Of course not—let me say that again, of course I wouldn't—but I wouldn't just quit the project and walk away, either. EAA Technical Aviation Specialist Tim Hoversten and Maintenance Tech Jerry Paveglio work on the center section. EAA stafers work on setting the center section in place with the help of Zenith expert Tracy Buttles. 46 Vol.2 No.5 / May 2013 Second, and more important, I was ridiculously impatient, rushing to meet a fairly arbitrary deadline. This impatience not only led me to use the wrong tools in an inadequate workspace, it affected the quality of my work, damaging the project even further. As I said, I used to think that the biggest problem I'd face when building an airplane was the risk that I'd never finish it. When I looked at the aggressively mediocre job I'd done to that point on my ornithopter, it occurred to me that finishing a project too soon is potentially an even bigger problem than not finishing it at all. The rush to finish left me with something I wasn't proud of, and to a degree, didn't enjoy building. In the case of the model, the worst thing that would happen would be that it wouldn't fly and that maybe I'd be mocked by neighborhood teenagers. On a full-scale airplane, of course, the risks are far, far more serious. (Continued on page 48)

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