Preparation
Thoughts
My goal here is to construct a relatively simple, efficient, sport aerobatic, fast, go place machine. Sort of a Cannondale R500 of the sky, by that I mean it won’t be the fanciest plane at the field, but there’s a good chance it will cost less and outperform anything else on the ramp. To meet this goal I plan to do everything I can to keep the plane light. If I’ve learned anything from my years of RC airplane experience, it’s that light airplanes do everything better then heavy airplanes. Every pound counts in terms of how fast the plane climbs, slow it stalls, and responsive it feels. I plan on keeping the plane simple without compromising performance.
I’d like it to be a Day/Night VFR ship with a simple wood or composite prop. While I would like to outfit my plane with a slick CS composite prop setup, I just can’t justify spending so much money on a prop at this point.
Workshop
Unfortunately I don’t have access to a conventional
garage or workshop because I li
ve in a townhouse. Of
course I’m not going to let that hold me back, I’ve decided
to start building this plane in my dining/living room.
I figure I'm young and I don’t live with my girlfriend, so
why not. At first I thought the compressor noise would
bleed through into my neighbors house. As it turns out,
this townhouse has a centrally located closet that doesn’t
connect to my neighbors’ walls. So I put the compressor in
the closet on some thick carpet padding and then lined the
inside of the closet with old clothes, blankets and pillows.
This pretty much silenced the compressor. I moved the kitchen table and chairs upstairs to make
room for the workshop. I have a small workbench with an
inlayed metal plate and a pegboard. I’ve also mounted a
grinder, a drill press, and a belt sander to some old corner
tables that I had left over from college. Finally, I put a
second layer of carpet down so I don’t ruin the house
carpet.
Tools
I purchased the RV tool kit from 
ClevelandTools. Im sure I could
have saved a few bucks by hunting around for used tools on Ebay or at
my local airport, but I figured the 
added aggravation wouldn’t be worth
the minor savings. There's nothing more frustrating then halting the
project because you're missing a tool. To power my pneumatic tools
I have a 26 gallon oil-less Husky compressor. In addition to the
cleveland tool set I'm also using a 10" Delta grinder, 10" Craftsman drill
press with laser sight, Craftsman 12" band saw, and a Craftsman belt
sander. I built a C-frame dimple die table to speed up the dimpling
process. The table positions the aluminum in the same plane as the die.