April 2011

The first job has been to work on the fuselage removing some of the over-sprayed powder coating on the frame work. The legs of the plane which join the wheels to the aircraft have to be bolted onto the frame in a very tight fitting tube. After the coating had been removed using emery cloth and a drill and the tolerance and fit confirmed, the legs had to be marked because the plane has to be so precise we ensured our accuracy using some of our specialist engineering equipment. Using the granite surface plate, two angle plates and a height gauge we were able to mark exactly 0.8 of an inch from the end of each leg as required.

The red coating is an ink so that the scribed line shows up more clearly.

Once the legs were installed and the new line centered with the hole in the fuselage we started to bolt on the wheel stub axles.

The axles obviously must be perfectly in line and level with the fuselage and this is where we are going to start off from next week!!