Hello there,
David Bosomworth here, builder 67; just found out about Avnets europa
mail. Thanks for setting it up Peter:-)
Started building in December 93 and was doing very well until january
94, when I was posted back from RAF Bruggen in Germany to Bracknell in
the UK. Unfortunately the garage needed extending and with various
other bits ( you know what moving house entails ) I have only just
made a second start.
To date the wings and flying surfaces are built but not micro'd and
the cockpit module and tailplane pivot are next to do.
This is my first attempt at kit building and one thing that is
noticeable is the amount of preparation required before you actually
start to 'build' a part. This is where a substantial amount of the
1500 to 2000 hours goes, as Graham Singleton has pointed out with his
>>'hundred jobs each taking half a day to do'.
If the builder has all the parts to hand and the facility to batch
jobs eg prepare flying surfaces in pairs and lay them up in one or two
sessions then a lot of time will be saved. Having all the alloy parts
and metal tubes painted/epoxied/anodised in one go would also help:
Dont forget to protect the insides of pushrods before you rivet the
ends on.
What is a great help is having access to a fully equipped workshop and
a friendly engineer, and I would recommend all new and prospective
builders to look into this if like me you have only the garage and
household tools to start with. As well as money you will save a lot of
time. Unfortunately there were no spare swing-wings available at
Bruggen to bolt into my europa, and the RB199's were too big, but I
would like to fit a Variable pitch prop on my Rotax 912 and this IMHO
will give perfectly good performance at an affordable price.
Completion date ? Optimistically, sometime in 96 !
chus, dave.
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