To get the elevators balanced, I needed to add an extra weight. I added the weight on the inboard side. I saw that it was advised to add the weight to the outboard side, but I can’t see how I’d add that weight there. I may re-think this later. To get the required maximum up/down […]
Build log
Engine mounting
I borrowed a friend’s engine hoist and he and I transported the engine to the hangar and mounted it on the plane. Everything went smoothly. I’m glad I kept his hoist for awhile, though, as a week later I realized it needed to come off again as there was a bunch of things that I […]
Wings back on
I’ve been getting comfortable in the hangar now and getting setup. Been doing a lot of smaller jobs like mounting the doors, putting trim around the interior of the doors, wiring the door closed sensors, polishing the windows (i.e. getting all the scratches out after years of construction abuse). Time to put the main wings […]
KORH Hangar
I knew that once my plane was painted, it would need to go directly to the airport, not back to my shop at home where its been built. My shop is not big enough to do the final assembly. After quite a bit of searching, I found a hangar to rent at KORH. Pretty nice […]
Painting the plane
First off, wow, what a massive amount of work to paint the plane. I thought filling, sanding, priming (repeat) was a lot of work – painting was about the same amount of work, but condensed into some long days – pretty intense. Anyway, I decided to have a local painter paint the plane for me. […]
Moving out of my shop
Its time to move to a hangar. I’m doing most of the construction of the Velocity in my shop at home. My shop is in the basement of our house and has a single-car garage door entrance. It opens up quite a but inside, but to get the Velocity in and out always takes contortions. […]
Transponder antenna
I mounted the a transponder antenna in the nose of the plane, right under the oil cooler. Looked like a pretty sensible place. After some research, it seemed like a 6″ disk should provide an adequate ground plane. Fabricated the ground plane out of aluminum then mounted it using a couple tabs. Added a transponder […]
Glare shield lighting
I added a couple LED strips under the glare shield. They’re connected to a dimmer switch/knob on the panel. They LED strips had 3M sticky tape on them, but I didn’t think that would last too long sticking to the fabric, so I mounted an aluminum strip riveted to the shield. It still looks a […]
Antenna bulkhead
Having a plethora of antenna wires coming in from all over the plane, I wanted to be able to route them all to one common header, then have patch cables to connect the appropriate antenna into the panel. I made my panel removable, so this will allow for easy disconnection for removal, as well. I […]
APRS installation
For those who are not familiar with APRS (automatic packet reporting system), it is a system that employs amateur radio stations to pickup and relay packets broadcast by remote stations. When a repeater station picks up a broadcasted packet, it relays via the internet to a central server. What has this to do with experimental […]