Hardware and Puzzles

More progress on the plane this week.  I am grateful I can walk from my house to the shop where the airplane is and jump back into projects.  This week was full of figuring out what goes where from the various piles of parts and boxes around the shop.  The good news is, there are less parts laying around and the airplane is a step closer to completed.  Only the major structural parts of the Stinson have the hardware specified in the parts manual--it's up to the builder to know what to use where for everything else.  I got new elevator cables from Univair this week and installed them.  There are a pair of fairleads that the elevator cables pass through on their way aft to the elevator horn

However, I wasn't sure if the up elevator cable went in the upper fairlead or visa versa.  I pulled them back taught trying to figure out the correct routing and visualizing how they should work pulling on the cables near the tail while the control column up front went back and forth.  I don't know why it was so hard for me to figure this out, but after 15 minutes of sawing back and forth I think I satisfied myself that the elevator cables are rigged properly.

I also put in the ELT unit.  Hope I never have to use this piece of equipment--it I did...well, you'd know where to find me.

I moved onto the door frames and rear cabin window frames.  When I first fitted the door frames back onto the steel fuselage, there was a 1/4" gap running down the backside of the cabin door and the aluminum door frame.  I thought this can't be right to squeeze these together with a screw so I went to the parts piles and found wooden shims that had holes in them that lined up perfectly with the holes in the door frames and they were labelled (thanks Mike) "L" and "R".

Once the door frames were screwed in, I also put in the assist handles on the front of the frame for when we will need to do installation in the cabin.  I was able to find some used truss head screws in the assorted bottles and coffee cans that fit the door frame holes and then matched them with new truss head screws that I had acquired with the plane.  In addition, I attached the rear cabin window frames which I was happy to do since there was this particular bracket that always hit my head when I stuck it inside the side of the cabin before.  Now the bracket is attached to the window frame.

I installed the side stringers and just temporarily dropped in the cotter pins that hold them in.  These stringers will have the fabric for the skin of the airplane fitted over them.

There were more parts for the front belly and sides underneath the cabin doors that I got out and cleaned off the dust.  This is where I had to stop because I wasn't sure how these were attached so I posted a question on a Stinson web group and also asked another Stinson builder and found that most of these are attached with rivets and some safety wire.  I'm working on purchasing or borrowing a rivet gun (I already have a large assortment of aviation rivets that came with the project).  The next posting will surely be riveting!  Lastly, here's a photo of the proper attire which I aspire to use this airplane for when it's completed.  It just arrived in the mail.