Art Zemon's Blog Posts

I built a jig to help me assemble the flaps and ailerons of my BD-4C. Note the use of aviation-grade aluminum gutter flashing to face the jig, obtained from the aviation aisle at the local hardware store. Here is a shot with a flap skin and three ribs set into the jig.

I started on the flaps for my Bede BD-4C airplane this week. The adventure began on Monday when Jim and Patrick and Rich very kindly came over and helped carry the wings out of the basement and into the garage. Each wing is 10 feet long and weighs about 85 pounds. The weight isn’t so […]

I am finished working on the controls for my Bede BD-4C airplane! (At least for awhile.) The last month has seen a bunch of fiddly little stuff that has been hard to photograph so I have not posted anything. Tonight, I finally wrapped up the controls. The rudder pedals are hooked up to the rudder. […]

I am going “off plan” for the tunnel of my Bede BD-4C airplane. The plans call for using sheet metal screws to attach the top of the tunnel to the walls. I am not a fan of sheet metal screws; they always seem to loosen and fall out. After replacing the screws a couple of […]

February was “tunnel month” on my Bede BD-4C project. The floor of the airplane will look like an old fashioned rear wheel drive car, with a tunnel down the middle. The difference is that the BD-4C’s tunnel will house controls, brake lines, and electrical cables instead of a drive shaft. I started by making a […]

After installing the rudder on my Bede BD-4C, I moved on to hooking up more of the controls. First task, since the rudder is on the plane, was connecting the rudder cables. These are about 15 feet long and have to be fabricated in the airplane, because once the ends are swaged, there is no […]

I have gotten a lot done on my Bede BD-4C airplane over the last few weeks. I adjusted the length of the push-pull tubes for the horizontal stabilator so that when the control sticks were pushed fully forward the horizontal stabilator was angled down at least 15°. Here is a photo of the stabilator pivot […]

I finished the aileron cables for my BD-4C airplane at the end of November. Life gets a little hectic this time of year (as you may have noticed) so I am just posting the photos now. Sorry about that. Which reminds me; I have an open position for a blogger/documenter to do a more timely […]

My Bede BD-4C airplane kit looks a lot more like an airplane tonight. I have finally mounted the vertical stabilizer to the fuselage. The front rib, which runs from the top of the fin, downward and forward at an angle, to the middle of the bottom,  is bolted to a custom-fit gusset as you can see […]

I lied in the title. I am not fitting the rudder to my Bede BD-4C airplane. I am fitting the vertical stabilizer. The vertical stabilizer is the thing which sticks up, like a shark’s fin, and does not move. The rudder is the piece attached to the back of the vertical stabilizer and which wiggles left and […]

Real men may have hard lines but sometimes men, even real men, have to be flexible. One of those times comes, at least in a Bede BD-4C airplane, when you need to connect the hard line fuel lines in the fuselage to the fuel lines in the wings. That connection requires a flexible hose about a […]

Over the last month, I have been working steadily on the pieces which will mount and control the horizontal part of the tail of my BD-4C airplane. Since I last wrote about the Horizontal Stabilator Push-Pull Tube, I have fitted the two weldments to the tail of the fuselage, like this:   Once I had the […]