Wow - I am at a loss for words. Utter failure of the health care system by that hospital.

Not the system, certain individuals.

Having a good laugh? Bloody painful with broken ribs that!

At least you haven't got a fiercely affectionate 5y.o. in a nurses outfit 'nursing' you by much hugging, soaking the bed with unwrung cloths as she wiped my fevered brow and doing a little dance on top of me to make me feel better. Almost as traumatic as the accident itself.

Dart before the plane crash








Darts latest xray

Hahahaha....

I have to make the rounds to see where the rivets I ordered wound up. As I mentioned in the Community Hall thread, delivery companies like to mis-deliver packages to one of my Park Place friends (we have a Park Place Circle, Park Place Court, and Park Place Way in my neighborhood).

Going to order tubing this week so I can rebuild the fuselage.

[edit]

Apparently FedEx changed their minds, and it wasn't "out for delivery" yesterday. It's back in Georgia.

Sigh.

If you don't stop going back to the doctor, at some point they'll tell you you're pregnant.

g.

Seems that way!

Based on the delivery shenanigans for the rivets (which arrived today), I reckon I'll order the tubing and just drive over to Georgia and pick it up.

I intially read that thinking the tube and rivets for DIY rib repair! Yours, not the kite's.

I came to the decision that the fuselage proper will be a complete rebuild; the gussets are coming off for patterns.

Controls and other stuff (like hardware, the seat, etc.) can be reused along with the ever important data plate.

Ovalized tubing for the gear, interwing struts, etc., will be ordered this week as well as new rivets.

I had forgotten that we used steel rivets on the large gussets around the cockpit, and so there's no drilling them out. The heads have to be ground off! Once that's done, the rest can be brought out with a center punch, though I'm not worrying about that.

I only need one example of each to replicate in quantity, so it's easier.

The other good news is that the thick gussets are very close to the spar material of a Cub, with the Cub spar being a bit thicker. My boss is donating a couple of them to me to cut up, as they fail as spars for other reasons and are scrap. Aircraft grade thick aluminum plate is big money, btw. I may get some bootleg time at the shop and use their tools, but I'm trying to avoid it...I already spend 50 hours a week there.

It's going to be fun prepping with all the gussets and tubes, which is the bulk of the effort and time. Fun like a dentist visit.

I'm slacking on video production as well, but that should pick up.

On the health front, last visit showed the fluid went away, though the ribs are slow to heal. I can't hit the sweet spot of being active enough to encourage healing without over doing it (I forget I'm injured sometimes and bite off more than I can chew).

Finally getting into it!

I am learning the pain of making gussets.

Cutting out the circles from .040 sheet was okay - a little learning curve, but not a big deal.

Cutting out the odd shaped main structural gussets out of .090 is proving to be a huge pain. I started with a dremel cutting wheel - waaayyy too slow and imprecise. Then I moved onto a metal cutting blade on a jig saw, which was kind of hilarious. Even with the sheet clamped down with big weights on it, the blade kept grabbing and bouncing everything everywhere. Attempt three was with a carbide cutting bit, which immediately fouled with aluminum and went nowhere. Attempt four was with the electric shear I used on the .040, which wound up warping the pieces; however, for trimming them it works a treat!

This weekend is attempt number five with a cut off tool; good thing I bought about twice as much sheet as I need, as I think there's going to be some wastage.

Video of making the circles should be coming out sometime this week.

I feel your pain!
Aluminium is so abrasive and it blunts tools so quickly, making patch panels for a video distribution system I was constantly having to sharpen the drills and hole saws.

When I was making aluminium handles for craft knifes I used a special water based cutting fluid/ lubricant that helped keep the tools working for longer, I could not use it on the patch panels though and the tools blunted much more quickly.

Ah the misery of trying to cut aluminium!
I didn't consider that such a soft metal could be abrasive though...that explains a lot!

Attempt five is where it's at! Nothing like going through every tool in the shed plus ring ins to kill a day, good times.

Aluminium oxide is used as a cutting compound, it is very abrasive, we had bars of it in the garage in various different grades from coarse to fine and it is also used on some types of "sandpaper"

A couple of ideas that may help you in your quest to cut the aluminum gussets.

Using a jigsaw

Source: https://youtu.be/lH-Bugq9nos

How to Cut Aluminum with a Router

Source: https://youtu.be/-gboj2XhuW0

With your abilities making a jig to cut them and then using one of those tools to cut them should be well within your skill set.


Wheels

Metal is too thick for a jig saw!

As I wrote, some techniques are better than others for this:

All the gussets for the fuselage are finished!

Now it's just rounding up a few bolts to replace the ones that became bananas, order a bit more tubing, and soon enough it'll be time to draw it out, start cutting, bending, and coping tubing in prep of putting it together!

Dart, saw an interesting thing while flying. My eyes were drawn to the wake of a small boat. This was near the middle of the state; not on the coast. Turned out it was two jet skis; one chasing another around. But the interesting thing was watching them go around small islands I noticed it appeared to be a water maze that they were chasing around. Thought it was pretty cool.


https://www.amazon.com/photos/shared/ebeJHIdkQzSXBagkWJZJzg.Z6hGZtILyjgt6kIAj-9-6d

That looks like fun, and a fairly large playground

The paintjob on the Cessna is a nice contrast to the green below.

Looks like a controlled flooding area! This is why our Lake Martin Logan gets flooded over every year - it's by design, and they tell folks the minimum elevation they can build at, with zero sympathy for anything below it. Pretty shocking the first time I saw just how high it's allowed to go!



Rest of the tubing and bolts to arrive tomorrow, so next weekend things get interesting!