Sling 4 for Matt Build Log

I am going to take a page from Craig's early days blog posts and start adding enumerated task lists to the end of each post. I use Trello to track tasks that depend on other resources (i.e. damaged or missing parts, orders, questions to the factory) and I keep a WBS/CP diagram to help me know what order work should occur in and remind me of what done looks like. But I still find myself staring hopelessly at all this data and unsure of what task to engage in. I've jumped from the empennage to the fuselage while I await the arrival of replacement parts from SA. I've gotten to the point where I have identified all the mysterious pieces for the partially completed rear and center fuses and have a good plan for going forward now. I hope that I've identified all the work that has to be re-done as well. For now, here's my plan: NEXT STEPS Figure out what rear fuse work needs to be done and verify parts and build Verify work in E1. Do the parts bolted to the web ne...

With the garage organized, I've spent the past couple of evenings sorting through the fuselage kit. 90% of the rear fuse was completed by the previous builder. About 15% of the center fuse work has also been done, but with some problems. Several dozen of the center fuse parts have been primed and have no part numbers. I poured through the build manuals and figured out all the mystery pieces. During that process, I noticed some had been completed incorrectly. I also noticed that some work on the center fuse was completed out of order, which made it impossible to fix without drilling out a bunch of rivets. I'm cataloging that work now and will detail it when it happens. Two other issues have struck me. The first is the number of missing parts in the kit. I dealt with the missing parts that I could inventory that were labeled when I first got the kit. Since I've been identifying the mystery parts, I'm discovering a number more of missing parts. This process is really e...

Over the weekend, I managed to get the garage in order after two weeks of chaos. And I'm quite happy with the results. A warning, however: This post is full of uninteresting details about how I reclaimed my space. Two weeks ago today, I moved the Sling 4 components I wasn't working on out of storage and into the garage. This saved about $310 a month; money better spent on other things. But, I created a new problem: overcrowding. Between the partially completed rear and center fuselage, the wing, fuse, canopy, and emp crates, the wing spars and long push rods, cowlings and fairings, the workbenches, paint booth, tool chests, and other miscellaneous items, the small two-car garage was beyond capacity. My wife was somewhat perturbed as well. She had agreed to moving the stuff out of storage and giving up parking in the garage, but once she saw the magnitude of the situation, she probably regretted her support. I don't blame her, I regretted my decision too. On the other ha...

Inspired by a series of articles this month from Kitplanes Magazine, I was reminded of the effectiveness of a good, old-fashioned Work Breakdown Structure (WBS). This is a charting technique for understanding project execution order, scope, parallel work organization, and Critical Path (CP) events. Being a software engineer, I'm very accustomed to managing large, long-running, and often rather ambiguous projects from inception to completion. However, building an already designed and fabricated airplane with defined build steps is quite a relief from the ever changing requirements, priorities, and technologies in the software world. Building an airplane is a long, often multi-year process and whether it's a one or one-hundred person undertaking, basic project management techniques can help keep it on track, improve efficiency, provide and unambiguous definition of done. Below is my combined WBS and CP chart for the empennage kit. The top and bottom levels identify the s...