My Bede BD-4C is looking more like a modern airplane and less like the Wright Flyer, since I bonded the eight foot long section of skin to the right, rear section of the fuselage. Conceptually, it’s simple. Paint the 3M Scotch-Weld #10 contact adhesive onto the airplane and onto the skin.
Search Results for: fuselage skin
Bottom Fuselage Skins Bonded
Big weekend: I have bonded the first fuselage skins onto my Bede BD-4C airplane. I painted 3M Scotch-Weld #10 Contact Adhesive onto both the skin and the fuselage angles and then “just” stuck the two together. Here are a few photos. There is actually more adhesive on the plane than is visible in the pictures. The […]
More Fuselage Skin
The rear part of the fuselage of the Bede BD-4C airplane that I am building is about 11 feet long. There are eight pieces of skin which cover it. The aft-most pieces are 0.016 inches thick and about 7.5 feet long. The four pieces farther forward are 0.020 inches thick about 3.5 feet long. I […]
Progress on the Fuselage Skin
I have made a bunch of progress on the first piece of fuselage skin for my Bede BD-4C airplane. This is the piece on the top of the fuselage, at the rear. It sits under the vertical stabilizer so, no surprise, I got to cut a hole in the skin for the stabilizer’s spar to […]
Skins, Tips, Brackets, and a Plate
Despite spending a week in tech rehearsal for Act Two Theatre’s production of Annie the Musical, I got a lot done on my Bede BD-4C airplane. First, I figured out a problem with the last pieces of the fuselage skin. Then I installed the wing tips, fabricated a couple of brackets, and installed the data […]
Cut the First Skin
Tonight, I screwed up my courage and made a diagonal cut along a 4 foot by 8 foot sheet of aluminum. This is the first piece of fuselage skin for my Bede BD-4C airplane.
Flights 2, 3, 4, 5, and 6
Spring and the new propeller governor for my Bede BD-4C airplane arrived so I took three afternoons off of work and went flying. 😀 I now have six flights and a total of 4.2 hours in my airplane. To say that this has been an amazing week would be an amazing understatement. Forgive me for […]
Getting Ready for Airworthiness Inspection
I am coming down the home stretch on getting my Bede BD-4C airplane ready for its airworthiness inspection. Over the last week, I have taken advantage of some unusually warm weather to wrap up quite a list of tasks: Met with Clint (my A&P) to test run the engine with the cowling on. We also […]
Oil Door and Induction Air Tubing
I completed two tasks on my Bede BD-4C airplane this week: the oil door and the induction air tubing. Oil Door I fabricated an oil door in the cowling of my Bede BD-4C. Unlike cars, airplanes do not have hoods which can be popped open. The cowling is typically secured on with Camlock or DZUS […]
Instrument Panel Support Brackets
I fabricated a pair of small brackets which support the weight of the instrument panel in my Bede BD-4C airplane, solving the problem that I identified on November 8. The panel is now rock solid and the rivet holes in the fuselage skins line up perfectly. My original idea was to run braces from the […]
August Airplane Work
Despite a trip to AirVenture immediately followed by a trip to New Jersey and my need to actually work for a living, I got a good chunk of stuff done on my Bede BD-4C airplane over the last month. I am making progress toward having a flying airplane. EAA Technical Counselor Inspection Gale, my EAA technical […]
Bede BD-4C Custom Front Seat Support
If you have been following my progress building my Bede BD-4C airplane for long, you may have wondered if I quit or vanished or what. I have not posted an update on the project in almost four months. No, I did not quit but I did have a death in my family which kept me from […]
Garage Heaters and Airplane Progress
I only have a little bit to say about my airplane this week so today’s post starts in a different direction. My friend, Don, and I got to talking last night. He is building a wooden sailboat in his garage. How cool is that?! As it turns out, it’s a bit too cool for Don to work on it […]
Return of the Bede BD-4C Tailcone
In December 2011, when I first started building my Bede BD-4C airplane, I made the tailcone according to the drawings. I documented that process in two blog posts, Top of the Tail Cone and Bede BD-4C Tail Cone. In the intervening three years, I ended up rebuilding the tail of the fuselage to fit the […]
Bede BD-4C Rudder Controls Access Panel
The Bede BD-4C airplane has a whole bunch of hardware inside the back end of the fuselage. The two rudder cables (one from each rudder pedal) are attached to a steel bellcrank. The bellcrank operates the front end of a push-pull rod (the back end of which is attached to a control horn on the bottom […]
Straightened the Crooked Tail
I discovered a serious problem with my Bede BD-4C airplane as I was getting ready to install the top fuselage skin: the horizontal part of the tail was crooked. Specifically, the copilot’s side of the tail was about three inches higher (above the floor) than the pilot’s side. I did some careful measuring and figured out that the […]
Making an Inspection Port
After spending much time and effort to properly create the large fuselage skins for my Bede BD-4C airplane, you would think that I would want to keep them nice and whole. You would think wrong. Two of them needed large holes cut into them. The top skin needed a hole for the vertical stabilizer’s spar […]
How I Chose to Build a Bede BD-4C
Several people have asked me how I chose to build a Bede BD-4C airplane instead of any number of more common planes. The questions come in three forms, all of which read like “How did you decide to build this plane?” but, when taken in context, sound more like: Are you nuts? How can you […]
Bede BD-4C Construction: Day 1
I spent the day at Bede Corp, helping construct the wings of my Bede BD-4C. For a complete newbie like me, it was quite the experience and I sure learned a lot. For instance, assembling the wings is pretty straightforward if you have done it before and have all of the jigs, clamps, and tools readily at hand. […]
New Flap End Covers
My Bede BD-4C airplane needed new end covers for the flaps. These things fill a fairly large gap between the inboard end of each flap and the side of the fuselage. I needed to replace the left one because some mistakes were made in building the fuselage and it is not quite square. Although I […]
