N4180V is on the way. Organizing the shipping ended up being the most stressful part of this so far; largely because the shipping agent was not good. Hopefully things will go smoother when the container arrives.
I have joined The International Cessna 170 Association (TIC170A http://www.cessna170.org/). They have a wealth of information, STCs and all kinds of excellent 170 history along with active forums where I expect to ask many questions during this project.
I found a light industrial unit with office space and a small warehouse/workshop area, which I need for work. Unfortunately the one that is ready now is already gone and it will be August before another is available.
Time spent just organizing things has been in bits and pieces but added up to another 5 hours!
Bought it … N4180V is now mine.
Problem is she’s still in Huntsville, TX and I’m not! Shipping her to Ireland is theoretically not that difficult to arrange, but …
A local A&P took a load of photos for me and he’s all set to pack the parts into a container. The shipping agent has gone silent and not confirmed the container will be there when it’s supposed to be.
I found a prop in PA, which I bought and is being shipped by FedEx to TX in time to go in the container.
ILAS project book has been requested and should know more about that in the coming weeks. The engine will go out for rebuild on the yellow-tagged crankshaft (coming in the box).
Paperwork for the transfer has been completed and is being snail-mailed separately. Once I have that she’ll be de-registered with the FAA and will cease to be N4180V. Eventually she will go on the EI- register.
Now I need to find somewhere to work on her. Once she gets here there will be a full assessment of the work required and a project plan.
I’m considering a 1948 Cessna 170 rag-wing project. She’s in Texas, had a ground loop so wing is injured. There may be more drama involved as she’s an aircraft already on the register rather than a kit. TBD!
Hours or research have already been sucked up by this!
“Begin at the beginning,” the King said, very gravely, “and go on till you come to the end: then stop.”
This is where the description of the work done will go. For this one the work was several hours of figuring out how to use pods.io to make this WordPress site use a custom post type for Kit Log Entries. I will add a custom widget to show a summary of hours spent on each section of the aircraft. I have added a custom taxonomy to differentiate the aircraft sections. The objective is two-fold: to publicly shame me into keeping up the work rate and as a builder’s log to satisfy/facilitate the inspector-type people!
The Cruzer-STOL is/was/may some day become (my proposed) mashup of the two Zenith CH 750 models: Cruzer and STOL. I’m planning to build the Cruzer kit with VGs added to the leading edge of the wings to reduce stall speed and the wheel pants deleted. In fact the undercarriage will likely be the big wheeled STOL version. I’m hoping this will give more STOL and rough field capability while maintaining a lot of the cruise speed improvements of the Cruzer; a compromise of course.
