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I am scratch building for various reasons. I am planning on purchasing things like the fiberglass parts,canopy,and welded parts. I am trying to establish a plan of attack to get started. I was wondering if anyone has either gone through this planning or is currently sorting through the same thoughts. I am not sure if I should purchase only enough material to complete a section (ex:tail), or if I should start by fabricating all of the aluminum angle/extrusions. I need guidance/suggestions.

You may want to consider purchasing all the aluminum sheet that you will need at the same time, because most places will give you a pretty good discount for a larger order (I got mine from ACS and they give a 10% discount when ordering 6 or more full sheets).

How you tackle the project is up to personal preference. I don't have the patience to build all the angle pieces w/o seeing a completed parts (although lots of folks have taken that approach). My approach was to order all the metal, cut up the sheets into their rough shapes (makes it easier to store and makes it clear what the extra metal you have to work with), then I built one part at a time....Vertical Stab, then Horizontal Stab, etc. I've enjoyed this approach because I have continuously seen completed aircraft parts and was able to keep working on something new.

One other tip...the fuselage longeron angles are long enough (10 feet) that they need to be truck shipped. I did what was suggested by others and ordered the 4 - 10 foot angles from Sonex when I purchased my spar caps...this way the shipping was combined as the spar caps also need to be truck shipped.

I started with the tail when I scratch built and don't recommend it. The tail is one of those areas where everything else either mates to or lines up with it. Those slight measuring errors when building the tail seem to all stack up when you go to mount it to the fusealage and further complicates rigging the wings straight if it isn't perfect.

If you have the room I would suggest starting with the fusealage. The parts are pretty straight forward and you end up with something you can sit in when done. As long as you build on a flat surface the parts pretty much self align themselves. After the fusealage then move on to the tail and then finally the wings. At that point you are about 50% done with a thosuand details such as the cowling, canopy, engine, electronics, elt, controls, etc taking up the other 50% of your build time.

One other option is to build all of one type of part at a time. I know one builder that spent about a year building all the angle components and then a few more month building all the sheet components, etc. When he actually went to go assemble everything together it went very quickly. The advantage of building this way is that you get very good at working with each type of material. The ammount of time it takes you to built the last part vs the first part is considerably lower because by then you know what methods / techniques work best. It also gives you a very good overview of the plans so by the time you go to assemble things you already know where they go and how they are supposed to fit.

One thing I would warn you about is to make sure you plan your orders for metal. Unless you are getting stuff locally shipping can get very pricey. It costs the same ammount to ship one sheet of .032 by freight as it does to ship 5 sheets. If you can afford it, buy all your metal at once.

Keith
#554

I think I have a good idea how I want to approach this now. I appreciate the replies. Thanks for the cost saving shipping info as well. Now all I need to do is figure out what I am going to order first.