Bagmans blowout and a week on wingstruts
It was around September when I was getting my pilot's medical renewed that I mentioned a slight
discomfort to my my doctor so he said 'Let's have a look, Oh yea - you've got a hernia'
Turned out to be a bipolar inguinal (both sides) so I went under the knife December 2nd.
It wasn't quite as bad as this, they did laparoscopic surgery and although I was
curled up in the fetal position moaning for a couple of days I'm feeling pretty good now.
So anyway - that's my excuse for no Project Luscombe work over the two months
As noted in the last update - the reskinning of the stab was completed and the new trim cables installed
here's a recap
An inspection mirror-light was needed to see the bucktails
These were the easy ones
It was only after getting the trim cables snaked through that I realized I shouldn't have put these
holes so close to the rear spar. It was tough getting them through all the way
The rib had to be riveted in first because the cables would have interfered with the bucking bar
But in the end I succeeded
I've definitely done more 'funner' things in my life than snaking my arm through that hole with a two pound bucking bar
I'm just about done polishing after which she'll be covered with paper and stored for a later date
I figured this would be a fairly simple 'light duty' task to tackle in my convalescing condition
For the week or two that I was sitting around in my pajamas I decided to scan and electronically file all of the records for N72004
and when going through the logbooks I read about these notches being done to accomodate skis when it was up in Fairbanks
When you stop to do the math, there's a lot a square footage to these things. This ain't getting done in an afternoon
I made these special C-clamps to remove Alfa Romeo front coil springs
They do a great job of holding Luscombe struts too
Sometimes keeping a view on where you started from helps you realize that you're actually getting somewhere
Big Jim helped me out here. I just let his weight do the work for me
There was some pretty heavy pitting in some areas. Lilly got a real workout trying to smooth things out as much as possible
Still more 'blending' to do here. There's no way to remove this kind of stuff
Another light duty task was printing and cutting out these lifesize instruments to play around with
I'm still just experimenting. Everything will be mounted on a subpanel behind the main panel
which will have the traditional beveled cutouts
Including (possibly) even the Garmin - but I haven't decided on that yet.