It’s been a while since there has been a progress post – so lets go over what’s been done!
(before Mar. 7th class)
We’ve gotten the airplane’s fuselage segment mostly assembled – it’s been placed in the center of our shop on sawhorses. Work begun on the “interior,” where the brake lines get routed, the center console gets assembled, and the rudder pedals get mounted.
The seperation between the seats and baggage/fuel tank area of the cabin has been assembled. Mounted to this seperator is adjustments for the seat backs, which are mostly complete. Unlike a car’s seat, the bottom part of the seats in our airplane is simply aluminum which is built into the fuselage.
The central rollbar has also been completed and mounted to the fuselage, an integral step but it does tend to get in the way of continued work.
Additionally, we are beginning the first few steps of the empennage (the tailcone) and the control surfaces of the aircraft, which will all eventually be mounted behind the fuselage section. Teams have split the work efficiently so that the stabilator, vertical stabilizer, and tailcone pieces, get finished as quickly as possible, only then mounting one to another.
Finally, I must mention that we are beginning to discuss doing Young Eagles flights in a previous TeenFlight airplane. Many of our TeenFlight mentors are certified EAA Young Eagles pilots and are offering to give flights to our students, who will take one student at a time on an approx. 20 minute flight in a TeenFlight RV-12iS (the same aircraft we are building), where the student can try flying the airplane themselves. Students should have taken home a Young Eagles permission form / waiver for parents and the student to sign and take back to class.