Jigging the Gear leg sockets #2

Today I attempted cutting the top cross member for the sockets. I printed the profile earlier today and brought that to the airport after work. I cut the member to the correct length first but I new that I had to do a test piece prior cutting my only piece of 1.25 dia pipe. So I did a test piece with the scrap and it turns out that I made the wrong angle in the profile template program I have. I accidentally set it to 40 deg when I needed 5o deg. Well today is lost. I spent a good chunk of my 3 hours at Lowes. I bought an new angle grinder for this project. Anyway I continued by replacing the jigging blocks with some new 1×1 I bought at lowes which worked better.

Time spent today 1.5 hours total time on the mod 7.5 hours

Jigging the Gear leg sockets

Today I worked on jigging the gear leg sockets. I went to Lowes and bought a 2X2 ft by 5/8″ thick particle board and I also bought a 18″ by 8 ft by 5/8″ thick particle board. The method to my madness will be to drill the AN5 bolt holes that go through the top of the gear legs and sockets first. These will be drilled approx. perpendicular to the axle. Also while I drill the top bolts I will drill the brake flanges since the heat treated 6150 steel will be a challenge to drill through. Once all the bolt holes are drilled I will put the legs and sockets in the jig I built and have the cross members welded in. The long particle board is to bring the axles up so that when the welding is done I have a very accurate no toe in or toe out so that the plane will track straight down the runway. Once the sockets are welded to the correct angles I will cut out the sections of the engine mount I don’t need and insert the new gear sockets. Tomorrow I will go back to lowes and get some 1×1″ wood for the the jig the wood I had around the hangar didn’t work the best hopefully the 1X1″ will be a bit straighter.

Time spent today 3 hours Total time on the mod 6 hours

Flying

I worked on my freestyle again today and yesterday I logged 0.5 each day for a 1.0 total. This will be my last flight prior to taking the plane down for the annual and the gear mod.

total time today and yesterday 1.0 hours total time since rebuild 61.50

Flying

Another beautiful day, calm winds blue skies so I just had to go get my G on.  I practiced my Intermediate Freestyle several times.  It was pretty cold again and I have been practicing sequences starting at 5000 ft just so that I had time to recover just incase I botched up a maneuver and needed the space. Truthfully I am always discovering how to better fly my plane so any extra altitude is always helpful thankfully I have never needed it.  Also Eve has been whining about how she has never seen me fly even though I have taken her up to go fly aerobatics in a Super Decathlon year ago. So I remembered I fly very near a baseball field. I told her to go out there and watch. It turned out well she was able to go and and watch so we were both happy.

Flight time today 0.5 hours Total time since rebuild 60.52 hours

Flying

I spent some more time working on my Intermediate Free. I ran through it completely 3 times and worked on trouble areas of it after that. Then I worked on the Intermediate Known sections for a bit. I then went back to the airport and did some stop and goes about five total. Today is a great milestone. My goal the first year I had this plane running was 60 hours. With all the problems I have had and the flight testing of the new superior sump I’m happy and the plane is running great.

Flight time today 0.8 hours Flight time is rebuild 60.02 Hours

Flying

Friday and Saturday I flew 1.3 hours total.  I spent the entire time working on the intermediate known and my freestyle.

Total flying time 1.3 hours total Time since rebuild 59.20 hours

Gear Leg Sockets #2

Today I got my sockets back from my welder. Who if I might add is awesome. The quality of course is excellent and I’m extremely happy with the end result.

No time spent today total time for mod 3 hours

Gear Leg Sockets #1

I got started on the gear leg sockets today. I started out cutting the 2 outer sockets to 11″ in length. I then cut 2 – 1.5″ long upper sleeves and the 2 – 3″ long lower sleeves. I then drilled 2 holes in the upper part of the socket .812″ from the top 180 deg out from each other. Then I drilled the 3 rosette hole for the bottom portions of both sockets 60 deg out from each other and one was offset from the other two by 1.375″. All in all 5 holes per socket. Tomorrow I will have them rosetted and ready to be welded in to the engine mount in the next couple of weeks when I start to take the engine off the plane for the mod and the conditional inspection.

Time spent today 3 hours

Total time spent on the Mod 3 hours

Flying and New Gear

Today I went for an afternoon hop after work. It was an epic day nice and cool clear blue skies a very light breeze you know epic. I flew my intermediate free and intermediate known twice I was pretty tired after that I flew a 0.6. Afterwords I got home and found my Aircraft Spruce parts for the new gear and the wooden crate with the new landing gear and various brakets and fairings. I weighed the gear each leg was 11.4 lb. I not sure how much a stock Pitts landing gear weighs but my estimate would be about 7 lbs. So after they legs get installed I will probably have a net gain of 13-14 lb with the addition of the gear leg sockets in the mount. We will see after I get it installed.

Total flight today 0.6 hours Total time since rebuild 57.80 hours

Flying

Went to work earlier today so I could get off and fly after work. It was a beautiful day high was 68 deg and clear blue skies. I was able to get some more work done on the intermediate known and my intermediate free. I think I figured out how to keep from sleeping on figure 2 in the known. I have been pulling to hard throughout the 7/8 loop. This time my made the loop larger and only pulled 4 G’s instead of 5.5 G’s. This made a bit of difference as I could pretty much stay awake with a small effort at straining. Anyway there was a wicked winds aloft today around the 35 -40 mph.

Flight Time today 0.5 Hours Flight time since rebuild 57.20 hours