We had our regular Monday and Friday workathons the last few weeks, mainly fixing up plywood bits and bobs. A real suprise awaited us after removing the fabric from the trim tab: a number of gussets and corner reinforcements had come adrift. Thanks to Pete we had some suitable plywood to hand to make replacement…

Pete advised that their Bocian VH-WOH had its first flight after refurbishment last weekend – congratulations! Looks great guys! To make sure ours won’t be too far behind being flyable again, we bit the bullet today and ripped the fabric off the rudder. The paint had become brittle and created fisheye cracks wherever it was…

So much for “just giving the fuselage a light sand…..” St. Peter declared that all the grey paint had to be removed as well. I tried his patented acetone/gladwrap method but it proved not suitable for the task. So I got a load of MEK to see if this would give more chemical grunt, but…

Another productive paint stripping day. There are a few spots to be detailed, but otherwise the old topcoat is GONE! Next item on the list is to ask St. Peter to come and sanctify the work so far, help us prepare a re-coating plan for the fuselage and give us some advice about how to…

After the production line paint stripping of yesterday, today was more of a clean up the leftovers day. I also did a bit of sanding with 120 grit, it cleans things up very nicely. Did I mention that KYU was operated from a sheep paddock, which had left a thick cake of sheep shit as…

The moment of truth has arrived – rotisserie is completely assembled on the Bocian ….. and after a few adjustments and setting the tail at the right height ….. it works! It does take a bit of muscle to rotate the glider, but on the plus side, there’s zero chance of it getting away from…

Finished tail hoop fixture. We should be able to put the fuselage hoop onto its stand tomorrow.

Made 2 pairs of gussets out of 4 mm steel plate. They are bolted to the rotisserie frame and fuselage attachment stubs, to enable easy removal of the rotisserie hoop from the fuselage. We intend to put the rotisserie hoop onto its roller assy on Monday. Hopefully I’ll also have the tail support ring assy…

Laurie and I participated today and last Tuesday with the Form 2 / 10 Year Survey of our club’s Puchatek VH-GKD under the auspices of Rob Moffat and Laurie Simpkins from Qld. It was my first activity with the recently gained Maintenance Authority from GFA, the ROC (replacement of components) ticket. We were involved in…

Today was “rotisserie meets fuselage day”. Laurie did a great job yet again welding the support struts onto the hoop. We added a couple of flat bar steel straps to connect the bottom of the hoop to the main wheel axle. Don’t get exited, we didn’t really connect to the actual axle, but as luck…