We're Back!

I don't know what happened to the Fall of 04, but it seemed like no time at all until the hangar was much too cold to work in. Spring and early summer of 05 should have been better, but work, trips, and other issues took their toll until mid-July. Needless to say, when you haven't been getting the work done, you can expect to find your work area perfectly organized to resume the job!

One point is worth noting: The Gyro picked up some dust during the months of neglect, but the anodized finish has held up just fine. Unless you want some really bright colors, this is definitely the way to go!

• Task 1. Take care of a lot of little jobs from previous sessions. Most of these were hardware issues. There were several points where we simply couldn't find the correct bolt for a particular job. We are not blaming this of Star Bee, as there were many places where we could and probably did misplace bags of bolts! To move forward, we simply used longer bolts as a temporary fix. I began ordering the correct hardware and soon all these "long" bolts got replaced with the proper hardware.

• Task 2. Finish the tank mounting. I hadn't been able to get things to line up properly until I partially disassembled the tank mount and went about it another way. All done now!

• Task 3. Replace the mis-bent axle. The replacement wasn't as good as our original axles on the prototype but it was good enough! The swap-out was tedious, but the job is now done.

• Task 4. Mount the pivot blocks for the Brock control stick:

• Task 5. Mount the tail boom. In theory, simple, but the seat braces and mast cluster plates were too close together to accept the tail boom. Loosened the lower-most bolts at both the braces and the cluster plates to get the needed clearance the then secured everything. Bottom line, the tail boom on this Bee will NOT be as easy to remove as on the prototype.

• Task 6. Getting tired and hot, but won't leave without mounting the tail wheel:

This went OK except for the fact that the nylon spacers that mount on either side of the wheel were both too large and somewhat asymmetric. Had to trim them down with a bandsaw and then re-dress all the edges with a belt sander.

By the end of the day the rolling airframe was complete (with a few extras). We were definitely back in the gyro building business. Next time out, it would be time to mount the 503! 

Session time: ~4 hour      Total Time: ~13 hours