The construction manual

About 1 year ago, I purchased a set of plans for the Sidewinder. This included hand-drawn plans of 50 or so C-sized sheets, and 20 or so D-sized sheets, and a 20 page construction manual.. A lot of decision making is left up to the builder. This Lancair project, being in kit form, has most parts already molded, a few templates for plans, and a pretty complete 350 page construction manual. Still, there are a lot of decisions left up to the builder! This week (Monday and today) were my working days, I've managed to get through the first 100 pages. This included joining the fuselage halves, firewall, rear bulkhead, center and outer spars and the hardware that is attached to them. One might say, wow, that's some fast building.. Why thank you.. Ok, really I'm reviewing / inspecting the work that the previous builder had done. The reasons for this are two-fold. First, I'm gonna be the one flying in the plane, so I want to make sure the best I can that it's built correctly. Second, I want to know how this plane is built inside-out.

Today was kindof a crummy day. Low clouds with some on-off rain showers. I spent the early afternoon re-organizing the garage again, and placing what I could in the attic. Michelle had been working on a presentation for her lab all day, and by late afternoon wanted to get out and play (translation: ride her bike). This happens to be just as I was about to sit down and continue through the construction manual. Long story short: I was going to go with her (reluctantly), but then it started pouring - so we comprimised.. She rode the trainer in the garage while I read through the manual and continued my review / inspections.