Ed D'Antoni, Calgary email: dantoni_at_telusplanet.net

After retiring in Dec of 2006 I started looking for an aircraft project to fill a couple of years of my spare time. Having owned an Avid A model a number of years ago I started looking for a deal on an unstarted Avid or Kitfox kit. I missed a few good deals and finally made a deposit on a mark IV in Eugene Oregon. Part of the deal was that if more than $500 worth of parts were missing I would get my deposit back. Calgary is 894 miles from Eugene Oregon; I left Calgary at 6 AM Monday morning and overnighted about 100 miles north of Seattle then a few miles from my destination on Eugene. On arriving in Eugene Oregon inspection revealed missing parts included; all of the hardware, wood strut fairings, aluminum trailing edges, wing drag tubes and a few critical control parts that would have to be fabricated. I had an aircraft Spruce catalogue, and a rough estimate or missing parts totaled $3500. In the end I paid $7500 for the kit with a new but very old 582 with an A gear reduction drive. Sounds like a good deal but in the end it wasn't as I spent much more than $3500 to fabricate parts and acquire hardware. Everything was loaded onto my GMC Sonoma by 4 PM and I was heading toward home. The trip home was fun. The fuselage on top of the rack got a lot of attention. At gas stations, restaurants, and anywhere else I stopped along the way I met young people that said they always wanted to fly but just knew they couldn't afford it. When I told them about ultralights, amateur built aircraft and the new Sport Pilot category many of them promised to look into flying. I handed out dozens of "barnstormers" business cards with eaa.org and RAA.ca hand written on the back. I met one young lady close to the Canadian border that said she was going to go to Vancouver BC and take ultralight lessons. The Canadian Ultralight rules are similar to the new US Sport Pilot rules. An advantage in Canada is that one can get an ultralight pilot permit for less than a thousand dollars and fly aircraft up to 1232 lbs. No passenger carrying allowed. You can then upgrade to a Recreational Pilot Permit and carry one passenger and fly aircraft up to 12,500 lbs. These rules have existed in Canada since 1991. STOP. I sold the 582 for $3000 and purchased a Jabiru 2200. Having drawings for the engine mount I cut and fit all the parts into a jig I fabricated and had it welded at an Aero welding shop. The mounting went well, but after doing much reading on Jabiru Web groups I decided I was not up to maintaining a Jabiru and purchased an HKS end of part one... more to come For those of you thinking of a Jabiru, here are four pictures of the simple fixture I assembled and took to the welder. Rear panel has holes drilled at firewall 5ngine mount locations. Front plate has engine mounting tubes installed All structural members in place and ready for welding. Mount on fuselage. Engine mounted. Picture quality is poor. Since I had decided not to use the Jabiru I deleted all of the photo's from my files. Fortunately I still had hard copy's in my builders log so I scanned them. The engine photo was very dark and the only way I could make it viewable was with one bit scanning in black and white. I built the aircraft in one half of a small too car garage. During construction I draped a tarp down the center to minimize damage to my wife's Subaru. The wings were hung above he fuselage when not being worked on. As part of my builders log I have two spreadsheets. One records date, time, accomplishments and hours. It also shows project-accumulated hours. To date I have logged 328 construction hours. This does not include extra time reading the manual, procuring parts and driving back and forth to the airport. The other spreadsheet accumulates costs. I quit adding items after I received the engine, as the costs were getting disturbingly high. Part procurement was difficult; I had the instruction manual but no parts list. The manual and drawings seldom show bolt sizes. As I progressed I would purchase at least a dozen of every part I needed, and often 12 of sizes above and below and still end up not having the right size. Most of the parts were obtained from Aircraft Spruce; they are great if you know exactly what you want. When installing the strut attach brackets I could not get the proper rivets locally. At noon I emailed Aircraft Spruce for 200 Cherry Q rivets. At 11 AM the next morning, while working in the garage a UPS driver pulled up handed me the rivets. Pretty good considering the package also needed customs clearance. It is a much different story when it comes to special items. My most frustrating was trying to get the proper Ball Links. Their catalogue had a bunch of cross-references to manufacturers but no dimensions tied to part numbers. Their staff is polite when you phone, but never ever came up with the proper parts. I never ever received an answer to an email inquiry. In the end I switched to other suppliers and concluded Aircraft Spruces abbreviation AS stood for "Anything but Service." The above photo shows some of the parts I had to fabricate. Another concern I had was the Structural Adhesive. I purchased Hysol 9460 from Kitfox and did some testing. The first picture shows how I tested a strip of wood by sliding a 50 lb weight along an aluminum tube until failure occurred. The second shows the failure was in the wood, not the bond. I can't remember the exact tensile strength but it was in the area of 1000 psi. This test was done after one day. Hysol takes 3 days to develop its full strength. I had no concerns after that. I arrived home with the Kit in May. By July I had finished the fuselage and wings so all that was left was engine installation and covering. I had a Jabiru engine mounted by the end of September. Fuselage construction was pretty straightforward. Install floorboards and controls and that is it. Wings were more time consuming, the ribs had to be installed and removed more than once. Drag tubes are installed, then removed and ribs slid onto spars. Cut outs for drag tubes marked, ribs removed and cut outs made, and then everything assembled again. Wing construction was scary for me. You only get one shot at it when using structural adhesive. There is no way you can make a change to anything once the epoxy has set. All in all everything went well and I ended up with wings that were symmetrical. I couldn't imagine making a wing tip support Tee as per the instructions. "Glue two 1" pieces of aluminum together to make a Tee. I cut out the pieces, epoxied a snug piece of dowel near the end of the vertical part of the T, filled the hole with epoxy and then mounted the top bar with a screw. The pictures explain it. The following 4 photo's show drag tubes installed, drag tube cut outs in ribs, and ribs epoxy'd to wing with drag tubes in place. Construction Photos Wings aligned with 4 "dampened" plumb bobs Marking and Measuring Front Spar Mounting bolt locations Spar Doubler. I couldn't find anything in the Mark IV manual about adding spar doublers, so I fabricated them as per my old A Model Avid. The doublers end up inside the spar. Wings installed to check alignment. I was thinking of keeping it low profile But then I remembered I needed more prop clearance. Wings folded and project put away for over a year. Test flying by my grandson. His older brother decided to be the instructor. My garage isn't heated so I left the project until next Spring. Early Spring and Summer Flying weather was great so I delayed covering until mid August. I had purchased pre-sewn covers from Aircraft Spruce just after receiving the kit. In spite of the fact that of the 7 pre-sewn covers; 2 wings, fuselage, horizontal stab, rudder and 2 elevator covers, only the horizontal stab and rudder fit. Covering, rib stitching and applying poly brush took about 3 weeks. The following "covering" pictures show covering procedures and the mistakes in the Aircraft Spruce supplied sewn envelopes. Tip and root of wing show envelopes are too short. Rib Stitching. Notice seam below vertical fin. Only out by about a foot. . I have dozens of constructions photos, however I am only highlighting items I feel will be of interest to readers. Tired of measuring and trying to write out dimensions for locating the hole and fairing location for the rudder cable exit I simply glued a piece of fabric onto the fuselage and marked the location and exit angle with a red marker. This was visible through the completed covering. I then slit the covering and installed the fairing. The pictures explain it better. Rudder cable exit. Marks show through fabric.