Almost there!........50 hours.

I've spent the past few weeks finishing off the myriad of little things that seem never ending. Fitting the wing root fairing and walkway took an entire day. I lost count of the number of times I slid the wings in and out, in and out.....Adjusting the pushrod lengths and trimming up the controls just eats up the hours. All that is remaining now before my 3rd stage inspection is to finish riveting around the wing root and fit half a dozen 3/16 lock nuts. I ordered 4000 ccp-42 stainless rivets, somehow I ended up nearly 50 short. grrrr! I swear that the aircraft is a black hole that swallows large numbers of the AN365-1032A nuts as well. As is always the case, the tasks that I had to do were the ones that I'd been dreading for ages. In every case, it wasn't so bad after all! Even casting the lead counter balances for the ailerons was a piece of cake. If you look in the video page you can view my engine start up for the first time. Incredibly, it started pretty easily. I was expecting all sorts of dramas, too rich, too lean, oil leaks, ignition troubles, but it was just easy. It's not all perfect though, my tacho wasn't working and the oil pressure went from zero to max instantly. I have since moved the tacho sensor to one of the ignition coils and changed the dip switch on the RDAC for the oil pressure sender. I will have to try it in a couple of days time and see if I'm a smarty or not.