Cotton Waiex 191 - N191YX

[Bryan Cotton]

Here is the top view of the mount installed.

And the view underneath. Basically the center screw for the windshield is long so I use that as one mount point. The other mount point screws to the canopy strip. I have brass hardware coming from Spruce and the paint is drying.

Here are my two bellcrank covers. I riveted them to the polishing table.

[Rynoth]

Careful Bryan... if you don't keep this up you'll end up finishing the airplane.

[GordonTurner]

...and that means NO MORE TOOLS....

[Bryan Cotton]

...and that means NO MORE TOOLS....

Not to worry - after the Waiex I have a sailboat to restore.

After that I have an exploded golf cart and a motorcycle to fix. I also have a car to rebuild and a truck that needs bodywork. There is also a Hummelbird to finish. After that, I'll find something else.

Edit - you can actually see the golf cart in the picture (same one going back the whole 8 years of this thread) and the hummelbird is in front of the hovercraft.

There will always be more tools!

[Darick]

It's funny Bryan..when I began following your progress I thought we were in the same stages of building and it became an unconscious competition to me. Every day I thought I must keep up with Bryan. I think you will easily get up to 20 hours of flight time once you make that first flight, thus leveling the playing field. If the cancer holds off long enough, I may have another unconscious competition to stay ahead of you. Possibly Mother Nature's plan all along to cure my cancer. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

[Bryan Cotton]

It's funny Bryan..when I began following your progress I thought we were in the same stages of building and it became an unconscious competition to me. Every day I thought I must keep up with Bryan. I think you will easily get up to 20 hours of flight time once you make that first flight, thus leveling the playing field. If the cancer holds off long enough, I may have another unconscious competition to stay ahead of you. Possibly Mother Nature's plan all along to cure my cancer. Wouldn't that be wonderful?

Darick, that would be awesome. I've given up trying to keep up with Ryan. Better get cracking on beating the big C because I'll be working hard on catching up now.

[Bryan Cotton]

All brass hardware, some black paint, and the compass mount is done. I also made aluminum bevel washers instead of using the steel ones.

Covers installed:

All my hose clamps have been installed on the wiring and fuel line fire sleeve.

I went over and measured the scales. I'm going to build ramps and a tailwheel stand.

[Bryan Cotton]

I've made my ramps. We are able to pull the aircraft onto them easily. Since I took the picture, I've added a support in the center of the ramp. It was a little too flexy with my 200 lbs in the middle.

Then we leveled the aircraft, lifted the tailwheel until the tailcone just came off the sawhorse, and measured the approximate tailwheel height above the ground for a 3 point attitude. It was about 25 3/4", so we were shooting for something about 25" tall to place on the scales. The idea is to make it a little short as it is easy to shim under the tailwheel. An empty (or full for that matter) propane tank is 24".

We put all the AN525 phillips head #10 screws in the floor. 4 of them were a pain - one in each corner. For the front corners I had to remove one of the bolts on the vertical stringer. For the back ones under the rear spar mount I had to grind the heck out of a 3/8" box wrench. But we got them done.

Adam soldered up and installed the background cabin lighting. He is designing the spot light so we can print that up and install it. I have most of the data plate filled out, using a hammer and embossing set from Harbor Freight.

[Bryan Cotton]

We 3D printed some NACA vent tooling. Here I've located the holes for one of Peter Anson's vents. Adam is punching the holes for the data plate.

I made a little tool to locate a pilot hole in the square corners. That way I can drill a bigger hole and have a radiused corner.

Here I'm nibbling out the vent by hand. I have a pneumatic nibbler but was a chicken to use it here. Plus it would shoot all the punched out pieces into the cabin, where the hand nibbler pulls them out of the cabin like this.

Here is the rough cut hole. We are making tooling for a dremel high speed cutter so we can use our 3D printed vent patterns as a router guide.

And a big milestone - the last rivet!

[Bryan Cotton]

We made those templates a little thicker, and printed out a stepped bushing to make our dremel tool into a mini-router. Worked pretty good, but the PLA bushings don't do well when they heat up. Aluminum would have been better, but I got the job done.

I have a pair of Peter Anson's 3D printed vents. I polished up the aluminum parts. I flush riveted them to a piece of flashing, which I pop riveted to my polishing table. I also changed out all the 3mm screws for #6 screws, since I have the dimple die for a #6 flush.

Time to measure the arms for W&B. Right wheel and wing leading edge:

Here Adam is marking the datum off the spinner nose.

We marked a couple of centerline points, after marking each leading edge and wheel axle. We stretched a thread through the centerline points and taped it down. To get the average of the wheels, as well as the wing leading edge, we stretched a thread between those points and measured where it crossed the centerline thread. Look closely, the thread is yellow.

We need to proseal and screw on the vents, add some cockpit weatherstripping, and we are ready to weigh.

Also as mentioned in the other thread we cranked the engine and got oil pressure.