The first cut

Last week, my friend Marc helped me removing the tail surfaces. Two surfaces were a little more complicated to remove: the RH elevator and the LH stabilizer. The RH elevator was a little puzzle due to the trim tab cable going through it. What we ended up doing is removing the cable from the sleeve. This made the sleeve much more flexible and solved the problem. The LH stab was simply stuck on its leading edge attachment. I've put some LPS 2 lubricant and let it penetrate a few minutes and finally got it off.

This is what the fuse looked like once the tail surface were all removed:

This week-end I had an appointment with my welder, Mark Clément from Aérosoudage. The objective was for him to inspect the structure and determine the work to be done. The conclusion was encouraging; all bad tubes and bad welds can be either replaced or repaired. I am going to have to bring the fuse to his shop; this will help him getting a good setup and maximizes the chances of having a high quality repair. However, before that I have some homework to do: saw off the bad tubes and burn off the paint around all areas where welding will be required.

I also had the idea to build a support for my fuselage that is going to allow it to rotate. This is in order to help my welder to have good access to the areas that need work. I asked him if my idea was going to help him and he said it was going to make a good difference so I dedided to proceed. I bought the wood, cut it and started assembling it:

Today, wx was really nice and I couldn't stand the 2D world anymore so I went for one hour of fun in the Citabria in the morning.

Once back at the hangar, I decided to continue taking advantage of the nice wx and pulled the fuse outside and start my homework. I don't want to do any metal grinding in the hangar as it creates a lot of dust. I chose to saw off the member that I hated the most first (NB: don't apply this last sentence to members of your family). The sound of my airplane being sawed-off was a tad annoying at the beginning, but I finally got used to it...

Once the tube in question was removed I could appreciate how bent it was...

I also removed the lug on which the side panel nutplates are mounted:

Nice view of the lovely welds on the LH side. Admire the beauty of the paint on the gear and hardware. I am so anxious to clean all this...

That's about all I could do on the fuse before I mount it on my super rack and remove the gear.

I also went to Scott's hangar today to have advice about a repair I noticed on my header tank when I removed it last week. The tank seemed to be patched with fiberglass and an epoxy based compound that was hard like rock. Since I'm going to have a welder available, I thought I was going to convert this small repair also into a proper repair. Had no idea how to remove that stuff...

Good thing Scott knew that it took only a little heat! Used a paint removal heat gun and scraped off the compound quite easily:

I did not notice any crack under it, even with a magnifier. I suspect there was a leak there so I think I'm going to perform a dye penetrant inspection to see if there is a crack or a pinhole there. If so, I'll mark it for my welder.

That's about it for this week-end! I'm happy of the progress I made in the last coupe of days. Next time I go the hangar, my objective is to finish the assembly of my fuselage rack. Stay tuned!