Multiple Projects

[steveinindy]

My wife was a jewel for letting me keep the horizontal stab on the dining room table for the best part of a year. We did have to put it in a spare room on the floor (beds had the control surfaces) for Thanksgiving, though;

I see you that and raise you "My fiancee is helping with my design and build".

[bigdog]

I thought multiple projects were the norm. I've got a flying Navion that requires maintenance and is an ongoing restoration. I'm trying to finish an RV-6 that's 90% done/90% to go. I'm trying to get started building all new wood ribs for an L-2 basket case (Taylorcraft tandem). And then there's the 75% replica Corsair design I'm working on. I don't count the BD-5 kit I got with the L-2 since I couldn't fit in it on a bet. Oh yeah, I plan to build a hangar too. Gotta have a bigger toy box.

I have friends with multiple projects too and my mechanic puts all of us to shame 'cause he actually finishes everything. So, yeah, it seems normal to me.

[Eric Witherspoon]

How well does your swamp cooler work? How big is yours and how do you set it up? Do you lower your garage door partway to seal off most of the opening, leaving space for the cooler and for air to exhaust?

Depends on the temperature / dew point spread, really, but in Phoenix, it would expand the working season to most of the year. Mine has a 5-gallon or so tank. It's got a connection for a hose and maybe a float valve for automatic refilling, but I judge the work period by how long it takes to run out on a manual fill. Fill once for maybe the better part of an hour's working. Refill to keep working. I refill it with a bucket. I haven't worried about any sort of cooling efficiency - just roll the garage doors full open, have the cooler near one of the doors so it's mostly drawing outside air, point the cooler at where I'm working, and let it go.

Back to the thread - in the down-time between projects, I was designing-my-own similar to a lot of people on here. But there's so many designs, need to be sure it isn't all just a waste of time - re-designing something that already exists. I guess that's part of how I got onto the current build - doing research as to what might already exist along the lines of my design (I did find one really close in wood, and another really close in composite, but my design is riveted metal) - maybe that's how I ran across what I'm building now. I don't exactly recall. (What I'm building is nothing like what I was designing - I don't know why I came to that decision either...)

[Eric Page]

Hmm, I may have to try another cooler again before I try to cram a queen bed into a twin bedroom! Thanks for the tip, Eric!