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!!

March 2011

On the 15th March 2011 we officially opened the Build a Plane project with a number of representatives from Boeing, the Royal Aeronautical Society, the Light Aircraft Association, Orchard school (our partner build school), New Fosseway, our own build team and the Lord Mayor of Bristol amongst others.

After an initial welcome speech by Mr.Davies, many other leading figures in the build programme spoke and welcomed the project officially to the Bridge Learning Campus. All guests were treated to a tour of the engineering department, a look at the build area and all the component parts. The morning was extremely successful and a lot of very important and useful contacts were made. The launch event only proved even further our intention here at the Bridge to be a recognised centre of excellent practice and vision.

Anyway the build has finally begun!! After several weeks of careful and meticulous inventory and storage planning we have now arrived at the point where we know where each and every part is located. This will mean that as each part is required for the assembly we can collate all the

parts first so everything follows the build manual. We have produced a sheet where after every step I will sign off the build event to say that it has been completed and then our LAA inspector can also then sign off to say everything is ok.

When the plane eventually travels down to London for its final scrutiny this will hopefully prove everything has been done in order and completed properly.

14th January 2011

Our plane has arrived!!! The plane arrived in mid January with representatives present from the Royal Aeronautical Society ( RAeS), our Chief Executive Mr. Mark Davies, Dave Hall from the Light Aircraft Association ( LAA), our engineering development officer Tim Baldwin, Assistant Head Steve Spokes and myself, all there to off load the boxes and more importantly sign the contract! The plane was delivered in two boxes; one larger box holding the pre-fabricated cockpit frame structure and the other longer box holding all the thousands of other plane components. Our build a plane students have been hard at work making an inventory of all the parts to ensure we have all the bits we’ll need.


The next step was then to securely store all the parts in labelled lockable cupboards to make sure everything is secure and we can find the parts as we need them. We are all looking forward to the official launch of the project sometime in March where we are hoping representatives from Boeing and possibly a TV crew may be attending... fingers crossed. Finally, we have to start constructing the plane itself and the first piece to make are the rear tail wings and rudder. You can keep up to date with monthly progression by looking at images and storyline on our weblog at http://blcbap.blogspot.com/ Mr. Buckley