Mar 26, 2009 – Horizonal Fin mounting brackets

March 26th, 2009

Its been a few months since I last worked on my helicopter. Mainly because it is cold in my hanger during the winter months. But now that things are warming up, I am back to work on the helicopter. Presently I am working on making the mounting brackets for the horizonal stablizers.

The first thing I did was to cut out the brackets from a 4031 steal plate that was 90 thousand thick and sand blasted the cut parts. The next step is to drill the holes, then shape the pieces before welding them to the horizonal fin spars.

Hopefully I will be doing that in the coming week.

Nov 13, 2008 – Horizonal Fin Installation

November 26th, 2008

Cleaned up the horizonal fins by removing the protection paper from them. We then cut the holes in the tail boom, for mounting the fins and rivited the support rings for the fin spars.

Oct 16, 2008 – Attached the Tail boom to the frame

November 26th, 2008

Finally finished riviting the skin to the tail boom frame. Today, we are going to attach the tail boom to the helilcopter frame.

Nov 16, 2008 – Tail boom skin installing

November 26th, 2008

Started installing the tail boom skin on the tail boom frame.

Aug 1, 2008 – Tail Boom

August 1st, 2008

Mike cleaned up the pulley and tail rotor shaft assembly.

July 9, 2008 – Secondary Drive Belt Tensioning

July 9th, 2008

This week, Mike and I finished the main rotor shaft alignment inside the hanger. The following day, I moved the helicopter outside the hanger so the sun could warm up all the components. Since it was 109 degrees outside this day, everything had expanded so much that we could barley deflect the built. But after sometime, we were able to get the 10 pounds deflection on the pro-drive built.

June 25, 2008 – Rotor Shaft Installation

June 25th, 2008

Installed the Rotor Shaft and aligned it to the frame.

May 8, 2008 – Skid Painting

May 8th, 2008

Today, Mike and I spent the day prepping and painting the helicopter skids.

Apr 19, 2008 – Control Systems

April 19th, 2008

Installed al the control system (pedals for yaw control and the cyclic control) after a good paint job on them.

Apr 2, 2008 – Water pump

April 2nd, 2008

Today, I removed the “Water transfer Unit” to make modifications to it. It turns out the that I was not able to get the water hoses connected to the water pump because the pump is too close to something to get the hoses on.

At this time of adding this entry into the blog, several months have gone by, so I will need to determine what the problem was.