Building a Nieuport 11...

[Floatsflyer]

Frank, it's been almost 4 years and 1 month to the day.

"It's alive, it's alive!!!

Looking forward to seeing your creation sprout wings.

[planecrazzzy]

Way ta Go Frank.... Hmmm... Taxi done... Time for the Airworthiness inspection...
.
Gotta Fly...

PS Looking at some of those Cables "Bounce"... Are they too loose ?

[Jim Hann]

Looking good Frank!

[Frank Giger]

My list is getting shorter, and I need to start figuring in the admin stuff along with the physical final stuff.

[pittsdriver3]

Get the EAA package that has everything you need to apply for your AW. Contact the DAR soon to see exactly what he wants and what his schedule is like. Don

[Frank Giger]

Oh, that was purchased the same day I ordered the kit.

So today was a funny mixed bag with the airplane. Dave, my brother-in-law came out to check out the aircraft and lend a hand, which was pretty cool.

In the "of all the dippy s!&^" category:

When putting in the cotter pins I had to loosen the wires to move the clevis pins about. Before committing to putting on the safety wire, I walked about 20 feet in front of the aircraft and just looked at it.

She was out of rig. The lower left wing had negative washout at the end and the right upper wing the same. Huh? So I loosen everything back up and re-tighten in order. Still katywhompus.

My brother-in-law is looking at me with this "I dunno about your skills" look an I decide to try something unconventional on the hunch that something isn't seated right. I walked over to each of the wings, grabbed both spars at the end, and wagged the whole plane from them fairly aggressively.

Step back and it's dead on using the mark-one eyeball test. Whip out my measuring stick and the lower wings are dead on. Raise the tail, check level of the plane, and the upper wings are dead on.

I think when I was working cotter pins I moved the lift tangs off from straight lines (the wires were slack) and they were pulling in different directions, and wiggling the plane jerked them back into true.

In the "bad things happen to good people when they're really good things" category:

We were mucking about, talking about Weight and Balance, and decided to go ahead and weigh the plane.* I grabbed the right horizontal stab outside of the support strut, lifted, thought better of it, put it down, and lifted from the center to go on my little table.

After we put the tail down Dave looks back and says "you have a major problem."

The rivnut on the left front support strut for the horizontal stab had come clean out of there and the strut was hanging free from the fuselage end.

"Dave, it's not a major problem now," I said, "it's actually a very good thing if that rivnut was stripped in the hole sitting in the hangar." Easy fix; in fact I'll check the others and maybe replace them with rivnuts that have the little ears that get riveted.

* After weighing the plane I realized I had somewhere between one and three gallons of gas in the tank. It was a nice exercise in technique but completely worthless as a measurement.

[jdanneel]

Sounds like you had à mixed stress/fun weekend ....

you know I am very curious to hear about your finished N11 Weight ???

also looks like this blog is slowly coming to its end .... Good for Frank

thanks for the education and entertainement

johan

[Sam Buchanan]

We were mucking about, talking about Weight and Balance, and decided to go ahead and weigh the plane.* I grabbed the right horizontal stab outside of the support strut, lifted, thought better of it, put it down, and lifted from the center to go on my little table.

After we put the tail down Dave looks back and says "you have a major problem."

The rivnut on the left front support strut for the horizontal stab had come clean out of there and the strut was hanging free from the fuselage end.

"Dave, it's not a major problem now," I said, "it's actually a very good thing if that rivnut was stripped in the hole sitting in the hangar." Easy fix; in fact I'll check the others and maybe replace them with rivnuts that have the little ears that get riveted.

Frank, you are using rivnuts to secure the horizontal stab support struts??!???

Please rethink the attachment of those struts, they need AN bolts. These are probably the most flight critical fasteners on the plane.

By the way, Fokker N1918Q went to the aerodrome this weekend:

[Frank Giger]

Simply gorgeous aircraft!

The rivnuts were pre-installed into the gussets for the horizontal stab supports by Robert as part of the kit.

[Frank Giger]

It's been an interesting couple of days with the airplane and the airport.It's weight and balance time, so I called Robert Baslee to ask what the CG range is, and what to expect for empty weight (knowing I'm probably heavy). Robert tells me to grab a pencil and write down a bunch of measurements besides the obvious firewall-to-mains and firewall-to-tailwheel; wing cords, wing span, etc., and tells me to send him the numbers as "it's kind of involved."Now, then, Robert has learned after all this time to use small words and simple language when talking to me, and I thought maybe he was underestimating my ability to do basic math. But hey, who am I to look a gift horse in the mouth? So it's off to the airport with plumb bob in hand. Do all the weighing (empty gas tank, plane in "flying" configuration), put a lot of tape on the floor with marks on them, and eventually go home.I say eventually as my little desert of an airport was actually populated. So lots of talking about airplanes and a new guy with a gorgeous RV-7 (I think it's a 7) is taking up residence.I had told the wife I'd be home about four, and she actually laughed at me - "See you around eight." In fact, I was done with everything about three, and with an hour drive I'd make it no problem. Then Mike from our EAA chapter shows up and says he's going to take his C150 up to check out a strip one of his friends is making. It was CAVU with winds at zero gusting to two, temps around 65 degrees. We all know I wasn't going to pass that up.Mike gave me the controls after we found the strip (it's dirt and we elected not to land) and I made it back to the airport. He landed the plane. The C150 is a weird plane. Not only is the third wheel on the wrong end, the stick was replaced with a split wheel kind of thing and the throttle is this weird rod sticking out of the dash. Plus it's super fancy with a trim wheel and flaps. Other than that it's a fine airplane and better than mine in one critical area - it's flying.Get home around eight (!) and dig around a bit on W&B for biplanes, and it turns out it's an involved affair. Evil, evil math, in fact.