Landing gear...

I decided to start on the landing gear even though I have some small clean up items to finish i.e. finish some welding here and there etc...

I checked with Aircraft Spruce and Wicks for the 1 1/2" steel axles. These are lengths of 4130 that are threaded on the end. They wanted approx. $40 each for these and I just couldn't bring myself to pay this. I decided to dust off my lathe threading skills and make my own axles. The cost for this is less than $10 for both axles so I figured it was worth the 20 minutes or so it would take to make each of them.

My lathe is an old late 1930's LeBlond with a 13" swing. It does a great job and is easy to thread with. A lathe of some type should be one of your first big tool purchases. With the various Chinese lathes out there, you should be able to find a small used one for a good price. They're almost indispensable.

I don't always have time to start in on a big project such as making the jig for the gear so I try to accomplish smaller task until I can get a few hours to do the bigger stuff. You can always find something that will forward your project even if it's just cutting some plate stock or some small bushings. Anything you can do is something you don't have to do later!

Here I'm cutting the holes for the control column. I did use the mill for this as it's much easier to get the holes exactly where I want them.

For the A-frame, I had to finish up the two rear braces. There are a few more tubes up at the top to put in but I'll probably wait until the wings are finished to put those in. That way, I have a little room to move the wing attach points slightly (maybe 1/8" either way). This will allow me to align the wings if they are a tad off.

Here is the completed A-frame, well, at least what I'm going to do right now.

Here my son is laying out the rear seat. Again, we use a very simple jig, just a few nails in a piece of plywood.

Here we are welding the rear seat in. You can use magnets, sticks etc to hold the seat into position while welding. I cut a few blocks on my chop (miter) saw the right height and used them to support the seat at the correct angle.

Austin making the parts for the front seat...

The rear seat is in and level.

Here is the front seat back tacked into place.

Here is the simple jig. The dark spots at the top are just scraps of metal meant to keep the plywood from completely burning up. As you can see in the pics below, it still chars the wood pretty good. The seat frame (or whatever I'm building) is layed out with pencil. Nails are placed on either side of the line to ensure that the tubes are held in position.

The other lines are where I've used this piece of plywood before for other parts. Simple finishing nails are used.

Austin trying out the front seat and making the obligatory airplane noises.

Here are a couple of views of the seats. Looking at the pictures, I realize that my shop is getting pretty cluttered. I need to clean but once I get going and I'm making progress I hate to stop and clean. Still, I'll probably pick things up a bit.

This is what we'll be building next. This supports the wings and the engine.

The A-frames were laid out on a piece of plywood and the tops of the tubing (where they come to a point) were tack welded together. This allowed us to move the whole frame over to the fuselage and tack it in place and the top will be centered over the fuselage. Of course, drop a plumb just to make sure.

Note the magnet that holds the tubing in place while it's tacked. I have several of these and they are indispensable.

Here I cut a piece of wood exactly 30 1/8". This puts the 7/8" tubes exactly 31" on center for the typical Piper type wings. I then put a 1" hole near each end so I could attach the clamps.

Now it's just a matter of adding tubes.

I was going to make the A-Frame that the wings and engine attach to but was slightly short some tubing. So I ordered what I needed and then decided to do something small. I decided to build the rudder pedals.

The first thing to do was to drill the hole for the 5/8" tube that goes through the 3/4" tube. This sounds easier than it is. I wanted to do this the "old fashion" way and just use my hand tools, drill press etc. instead of my milling machine. I've been trying to build this simple airplane using simple jigs and tools. This rudder pedal would have been much easier putting it on my mill vise at the right angle and milling the hole and the flat at the bottom. Instead, I used a block of wood that was cut at the correct angle and used it to support the tube on my drill press. I then used a step bit (Unibit) to cut the hole. Sounds easy enough but holding everything in position while drilling was a  tough task. The angle was roughly marked with a silver pencil and cut with tin-snips. I finished it on the belt sander to make it perfect. I have used the tin snips a lot on this project and they have proven very useful. I can cut a usable saddle joint in a tube in about 30 seconds which make fitting of tubes very fast and very easy. Saves a ton of time.

This jig took 5 minutes to build. I always keep a bunch of these blocks around just for small tasks like this. I've also used finishing nails occasionally to hold tubes into position. Little things like this is what enable you to get things accomplished.

Here it is all welded up.

The .063 sheet stock is placed on the angled part and welded up. Another time saver is buying the sheet stock in strips. I buy a couple of feet of 3/4", 1" and 1 1/2" wide .063 and .125. This doesn't cost much but saves a lot of time on a lot of fittings. This piece took 1 minute to cut out and another 2 minutes to weld up.

I still need to put the end pieces on where the rudder cable attach and the ends that keep your foot from slipping off but I had to get in and eat supper and spend some time with my lovely wife! The next one I may make using the mill and see if setup time exceeds the manual labor time on the first on.

Well, I did cut the other rudder pedal on the mill but it didn't save any time, it just made it extremely accurate. But, of course, once you start to weld on it, it moves around some so you don't really gain anything.

The end pieces were cut out on my little metal cutting bandsaw.  You can get these at Harbor Freight, Grizzly etc. for cheap. I've had it for 20+ years and it looks like hell but keeps cutting great! The pieces were roughly cut out and cleaned up on the bench grinder. Here they are being welded on.

Here are the finished pedals.

I've received the tubing I ordered so next I'll start on the A-frames.

Once the cross tubes are placed in proper position, I mark the centerline of each tube and drop a plumb to see if the top longerons are off to one side. If they are off then they can be held in place until the down tubes are tacked into position. With the plumb, I also mark where the down tubes will go so that they are exactly vertical.

Here some more tubes are in place. It's important to constantly check for straight and true. You can easily tweak the frame into position right now but with every tacked tube it becomes a little more rigid.

Here are a few airplanes I've built over the years using some of the same techniques that I'm using on the Breezy. One of my very best friends in the world, Bill Nolan, taught me practically everything  I know about building airplanes. I first met him at 14 years old at the airport and he was working on an old Aeronca Champ wing. He immediately told me to "get over here and help me on this wing". He had the patience of Job and was like a Dad to me. He was killed about 7 years ago in his RV-4. I still miss him every day.

The first plane pictured below is a Pitts S1C that I started when I was about 19 years old. I finished it in less than 1 year but Bill and I would stay up until 2-3am on most nights working on it. Later I built some modified Ultimate wings for it with four full span ailerons and the slave strut moved inside the I-strut. I took out all of the internal brace wires, covered it with 45 degree mahogany plywood and left off a third set of flying wires that Gordon Price had designed in there. This thing had a roll rate of about 450 degrees per second!

This was not my first building experience as I had a KR-2 project when I was 15 years old and built a Smith Miniplane (rebuilt is more accurate) while in High School  with my brother who was also in High School (which we later traded for a Texas Taildragger C-150). The pictures are kinda crappy because I just took a picture of the pictures hanging on the wall of my shop.

This plane is a Highly modified Stephens Akro called a Laser. It was based on Leo Loundenslager's famous Laser that he developed except I took it a step further and put a big 260hp Lycoming in it. I also expanded the aileron a couple of bays for faster roll rate. This is a very high performance, unlimited aerobatic airplane. It flew very well though, of course, nothing flies as well as a Pitts!

This is another highly modified Pitts Special that I built for a physician to do airshow work. It had a 4 cylinder Lycoming that was modified to pump out about 250hp. The ailerons were my own design utilizing an offset hinge, 3/4 length and all polished aluminum. I got the idea for the hinges back in the late 80's, early 90's from Ray Williams (he built a retractable gear Pitts!), who in turn had developed them with Kermit Weeks. I tried to take the best from their work and incorporate it into this plane and some others I built. It had a great "feel" to it and a very fast roll rate. Later Curtis Pitts used similar type ailerons on his Super Stinker Pitts (or maybe Kermit got the idea from Curtis, not sure). I also built the spring aluminum gear. I had to build a custom hydraulic bender and set up the milling machine to shape and mill all of the brake line grooves etc. I built and sold these for a while.

This is the last Pitts I owned, an S2B. It was a store bought and carried a 110K+ price tag but like all Pitts, flew beautifully. I may buy another 2-holer someday but I really enjoy the performance of a lighter airplane. Every time someone flew with me all I could think about was how much performance I was giving away!!

Back to Breezy's!

Here all of the tubes are tacked in and the jig is removed.

Here is a picture from the front. I'm pretty happy so far with how it's coming along. I just wish I could spend more time on it.

For those who wonder why I don't get more accomplished, here is what it's like being a resident physician. This month I'm covering our Hospital service at NEA Baptist Hospital. I usually get up at 5am and round on all my patients plus I have to admit all the new ones during the day. At noon I go to our noon conference which is usually really interesting. Someone will present a topic such as an interesting case and go through the ins and outs of it. After that we have our "report" which is where all of the AHEC doctors get together (there's about 25 of us) and present all of our patients. I present all of the ones at NEA and the others present the St. Bernard Hospital patients. There's also our Obstetric patients (we deliver something like 5-600 babies per year) and the pediatric patients. This usually takes another hour or so. After that I go back to the hospital and check on all the patients and discharge the ones that are ready to go home. There are always labs to check on, X-rays to look at and other specialist to confer with. On Wednesday I have my afternoon clinics where I see my clinic patients and on Thursday afternoon I go to the Church Health clinic which is a volunteer clinic. These clinics are tough because if I get called by the ER to admit someone I have to drive 10 minutes to the other hospital and write up the admission paperwork (the whole process takes close to an hour) yet I still have to see all of my patients. If all goes well and I don't get called at 10 minutes 'til 5 then I usually get home by 5:30 or so. Of course, once a week I'm on call and that usually involves little to no sleep for the work day, all night and the following day so that can wear you out pretty good! Still I love it and am really glad I'm here at this residency.