Playing catchup! I have in fact been working on the Sport Trainer and made some decent progress since my last blog. Below are pictures, I'm now back in the groove of working about an hour per night. Have learned lots about cutting/trimming all the tubing to fit. One of the best purchases I made is a laser pointer/leveling device used for home projects - it's great for making sure the fuselage is leveled.  It has 90 degree cross beams as well so I can confirm height of upper longhorns is the same without moving the leveling device.

I did purchase the Super Sport plans adaption from Wag Aero as well. I stumbled on a 0-time Lycoming 0-290D for a very good price and grabbed it. This means I've got additional supports I've got to add.

 One interesting thing about this project, the more you read the plans, the more stuff you find. Stuff is just buried in them and it takes hunting to find it - not at all like my Sonex project was.

It takes more time setting up jigs than anything else. Once the jigs are setup, cutting and notching tubing goes quickly and tack welding just takes a couple of seconds.  For the most part I notch with aviation snips for the .035" tubing and an angle grinder for the .049" thicker stuff.  One item I learned - don't make big tack welds!  You WILL have to cut stuff out where you find you screwed up. Tack welds should not be more than 1/4" long at most. Also, the stations between upper and lower longerons are different - don't get confused between them.  I did drill 1/8" holes in my lower and upper longhorns where the tubing intersects. It will allow for the linseed oil to flow through it for corrosion protection later on, and it also gives a vent for hot gasses when welding so that you don't get "volcano's" from hot gas blow outs.

Below is a slew of pictures since last year's update.  Yes, as you can see, I'm in a tight build area in my basement. I did build my entire Sonex/Waiex in here though - so it can be done!

Total time invested since my last update is almost exactly 60 hours. That brings my total time on this project to 100 therapeutic hours - including table build and other misc. stuff.