First mistake

I made my second part a trim tab that goes on the every back of the plane.  Well I measured once before I made a 90* bend opps!!! I straightened the part out and bent it again in the correct location. I did it mostly for practice because I scraped this piece and made a new one.  It's hard to see in the photo but there is a wave in the top of the trim tab. Plus when you bend a piece of metal multiple time it becomes weaker.

Here's the trim tab redo with the piano hinge clecoed on.  A cleco is a temporary fastener which will be replaced by a rivet. I remade that damn piano hinge three times. It was a pain getting the holes to lineup all in a row.

My first part

Here's my first part I cut from a sheet of .032" aluminum and formed.  It's a cable attach plate which will help support the trim tab cable.  The second picture shows where the part will eventually be riveted. 

Building a Sonex Airplane Serial #1612 4/20/13

Hello,

I'm starting on two projects that I never done before blogging and building an airplane.

I've wanted to fly since I was a little kid playing baseball watching Navel trainers doing touch-n-goes at the airfield we shared. You can see the little league baseball diamonds in the photo.  My eyes were always in the sky.

My dream of flying came true on July 1, 2011 when passed my check ride. I'm shaking hands with the FAA examiner Ron Albertson and next to me is my good friend and flight instructor Steve Swab.

The plane I'm building is a Sonex single engine two place (seats) airplane serial #1612.  I'm fortunate that there have been several built in the Kansas City area so I have a lot of technical support. 
Sonex Home Page
Sonex Workshop Photo I'm on the right

I got hooked on a Sonex when my friend Bob Mika gave me a ride in the Sonex he built. 

 
This is what my plane will look like when I get done. The only difference I won't have the nose wheel mine will be a taildragger configuration.  

Thanks for visiting my post. 

Woo Hoo my kit arrived today 4/19/2013

Con-Way Delivery Truck

A very stressed delivery driver.  He didn't know how he was going to unload an 800lb pallet to a residential address.  Sonex has figured it out, once you cut the bands and unwrap the boxes everything can be unloaded by hand.  Plus I had three friends helping me out.  Steve Swab - flight instructor. Matias Causa - he's helping document the build His Website. And my neighbor Bob Marshall. I was so excited about my kit I forgot to get a picture of them. Thank you guys

  The boxes in my garage aka aircraft factory.

Here's the wing spars or the backbone of the wing. I spent the money and had the factor build them which will save me several months of build time. After seeing the spars I'm extremely happy I had them built. 

They sandwich a lot of parts inside the pallet. I'm going to turn the pallet into a 4x10' table. 

Built the Table 4/20/13

I built a table slash workbench with the material from the pallet.

From the frame.

To a finished table.

There's no way I would have been able to get this finished is one day without the help of my friend Lance Carlson.  Thank you

Unpacked 4/28/13

After getting the table built and unpacking a ton the parts I have final starting building my plane. I've had this dream for a long time it's nice to get started:)

Every square inch inside the boxes was used to pack parts.  My truck was loaded down with cardboard and paper for a trip to the recycle center.

Finally got all the parts unpacked inventoried and put up. Then I laid out parts for the tail section on the table.  Most of the parts in the kit come per-formed with matching holes already drilled. Which is really nice, however to be an amateur built experimental airplane I still have to build 51% of the plane. Connecting all the per-formed parts count as part of the 51%.  Good thing because I'm really good with pegs and holes:)  There will be few parts I have to cut from aluminum stock and form myself. Yikes!