by iancshippee » Mon Sep 27, 2021 9:15 am
Finally, after several years in various states of being assembled/disassembled, Sonex # 823 is back underway! This particular Sonex was started by a good friend of mine back in 2005. He was very meticulous in his work, and between '05 and '11 assembled all the control surfaces, the tail components, the wings, and started on the fuselage. However, having to move a few times for the military, the project often needed to be disassembled and packed into a trailer. finally, it ended up being stored in that trailer at his parents' house until late 2019, at which point he gave me the project. It came home with me and I transferred everything from the leaky box trailer to my workshop, checking for damage and corrosion along the way. all was well, so everything was packed away until some of the larger house projects were finished. finally this summer the major projects were finished, and I could turn my attention to the Sonex! I decided to start with re-assembling the wings. I built a large table with 2 4x8 plywood sheets over 2 16 foot scaffolding planks, all on 4 sawhorses. Thankfully my friend marked everything very well, and within an hour I had all the ribs clecoed onto the left spar. seeing that everything lined up, I disassembled them again and cleaned the spar and ribs, and then reassembled them all and attached the rear spar. putting all of this together was such a fantastic feeling; seeing a stack of parts in a box suddenly take shape after being stored so long made bot myself and my friend feel phenomenal. I plan to start pulling rivets next weekend after going over the plans thoroughly to make sure I didn't miss anything. The adventure begins!
Sonex A project #0823
N1127S reserved
Foster, RI