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About to Throw in the Towel

asw20c

Well Known Member
I have been working on my slow-build wings for almost 2 1/2 years. About 8 months of that time I was making little to no progress because of two back to back problems I encountered (with my pitot system and bottom skins), but eventually I overcame both and had been very happy with the quality of my build. Today I finished building my flaps after about 2 months of effort (they're beautiful, by the way) only to realize that they are both junk. I misinterpreted the plans and ended up getting the rod-end subassemblies mirrored and installed backwards. In other words, the left subassembly was assembled in the right flap, and the right in the left flap. They fit fine. And it is completely irrecoverable. It kept nagging at me that the location of the nutplate didn't seem right, but I was sure I had followed the plans correctly.
There is no way to fix this problem except to buy all new parts and hardware and start over. I'm so frustrated and angry about losing this much time on the project after having just gotten past the difficulty of the bottom skins that I'm tempted to walk away from the project. It seems I'm doomed to keep working on these **** wings in perpetuity. It's that or admit defeat and lose all the time and expense of this project so far.
 
Chin up, man. I took 27 years to finish my Lancair. In my defense I took ten years off to build a house, but even so... What convinced me to finish it was when I realized that it wasn't worth squat unfinished. All that time and money I had invested would be flushed down the toilet if I wimped out. So I sucked it up and finished the project five years ago and have been having fun ever since. Don't let it go...
 
Something like that can take the wind out of your sails on any project, not just an airplane. One way or another we've all been there.

For what it's worth, my buddy damaged one of the flaps on his RV6 and vans sold him a new assembled one for less than $400 bucks. If you can't stand the though of rebuilding them from scratch, it might be worth a call to Vans to see if you can fix it with the checkbook and move on, just for the psychological boost.

Then again, think about a few years from now, when it's sitting on a ramp somewhere and a random ramp rat asks you if you built it. What will it feel like to say: "yeah, I built it, In fact I built some of it twice!"
 
On my RV-3B project, I had a lot of trouble with the wings. I went through something like four tanks, four outboard leading edges, four ailerons.... you get the idea. But I kept plugging. In the end, I had two good wings, complete with flaps and ailerons.

Somewhere in the middle, I realized both that I enjoyed building the plane, even though I was getting tired of wings, and that AS long as I could afford to buy them, Van's would cheerfully sell me new parts.

I'm on the fuselage now and haven't screwed anything major up in a while. Hope that continues!

So hang in there. It's doable. The second pair do indeed go faster than the first, and look better, too.

Dave
 
I have an extra left flap I built but didn't fit to my satisfaction. Happy to send it to you for cost of shipping.
 
Hang in there and don?t give up. Learn from your mistakes and try not to repeat them.

We had to scrap the horizontal stabilizer and an aileron on my dad?s -6. The lost time and money stinks, but it?s not the end of the world.

I?ve seen much, much more expensive and time consuming mistakes on big airplanes?like entire wings having to be scrapped. Not to mention all those less expensive parts like landing gear, engines, etc...
 
Going against the grain here...

The building process is done (IMHO) as a enjoyable endeavor NOT just to have an airplane. Airplanes can be bought and probably cheaper than building one.

We all go through frustrations as we build and that's exactly what makes the build process so satisfying....working through those frustrations and seeing the other side.

I can't imagine the frustration of discovering both flaps are junk. Before I went on, I'd personally think about why such a mistake was made. Only you will be able to answer that. I don't know about the -14 but the -7 plans have ample warnings about left vs right issues.

Everyone is not a builder but most people HERE are, ergo, the keep on pushing mentality in the responses. If you're a builder, figure out what went wrong and keep on building. If your not a builder, there's no shame in admitting that and buying a nice used -14 and having a ball with a wonderful aircraft.
 
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Ok...the flaps are beautiful....just confuse...
You spent .002% of you life making something perfect....ok...
think of the poor fella who had issues after landing at Oshkosh this year.
Well, we?re not going to have landing issues and we are going to make yard art out of confused flaps and build another pair correctly. .002 % building perfect.
Now, give us your best Academy Award performance and get on with it.
In 7 years and 300 hours on your aircraft it won?t be a big deal.
Two months is nothing....
There is no quitting, the journey is what it is...
Plow on.

R
 
I bet your second set of flaps take a week each if you can dig into 'em.

The first set of flaps will be good for practice pieces if you decide to paint your own airplane.

Declare victory (or admit to a temporary setback) and move forward.

<Says the guy who built three RV-6 ailerons.>
 
Build on

Suck it up and build on....I made numerous mistakes and had to do it over...then, when I was close to flying, I put my battery in backwards and fried my system.....

I have 74 hours on my 8 now.

Build on and make more mistakes!!!

Good luck


Don
 
I did the SAME thing on my 9A ailerons.
I bought new skins and all the parts to build again. It took less than half the time to do them over.
Keep going, it'll get there.
 
On all my builds I found wing construction the most tedious, repetitive, and least fun part of the build. I would suggest getting another part of the build going like the fuselage. I usually had two parts going at the same time. When I was bored with one I?d move over to the other.
 
My heart is bleeding for you

Is it not possible for the OP to carefully drill out all the nose skin rivets and then do the correct rod end install?
Such a waste to let go of those flaps now.
 
Thanks everyone for their own stories of woe and words of encouragement. I thought you might like to see my expensive wall art:
-EDscsCp4w_4DvZ2L8HB04WIQKSfa0dSb9w13vi6GfGHrSx9cmPGiY47qSzQrRFv1ZQDtQDqh60RVQHYEDk1aSmbvEwWPzm9rW7ghI8LqkSU1uBS02U_ZBcyhZCW_zcz71i79MTzmABUFg_NSULZbmJYaMzmxCkk2xymXKrLnjthZu8WpMCx7S5PG0eis8JlBRWa0fiKO5OS1sym0fo5oZ_JnkZi0EQtYQY3Vak6oMykv7NXnT6-GXFcFqw2cCIAWQyIiKySlci4BxYM1rb26MYCus41p5J9o-qXLgX9-CZan7yxWVR0QAuVXTGs9iLKNd3HlWIZfmzmG6cAeqQN2nSj39FWe50TVbvCJyIjFKym2vU-BYCyE3IY9_b3FwxyU4SMPEQGZnRNbzQQED1zXut19i_GyS40_CXsmSW4PMyPyWgo19mhsBRQEKOX2bi0IfEfFjTDhkUwu1PknRSpSZ4rGtlmNYZZcmM-uy1y2_KcYkEEU2J6WLXs3WPLmvJB5mIUPTL05qJQkq0hKrHPjMXDbeugv0bsSNtHCuYdCsNa8j2IvubU-5vFLtx4nC5_zArfIVMGb9DyuJdPTH2WS_ryVtiXvtMvQHErkHGab7y6TNHai_eOjVH8PQkBgCmB2fMXpGIlAiHH2-jk1iQFdeIYoctCPFsa=w900-h675-no

vQvL0aJyo89nYt_wbolAGjwBW-Ywbj8BiShVlmTycZhnuf-y7115x4s_lWIWAZuQWhHIgk8kCt3U2j0piIEdXPniKvnXACH7iabp8E6cgORNqqJ6gkQAmEhNMw2b1UQR4ZbTrcvR3MyTqBvnKA7U2GIVzMtzmMQn-yEThHGKVVRp8_12FxEJPzOCAq-5ssbHRL_o-kdX1s2UP-zPE0xqPfxK9QTLBHZOtyV4PC4PG6Qoyz0-wIsolA3fTkuV-wkO6rPNPJZANrxvOtoPasxbmbfukfqwZz8CXLv5I_hd9tWVV9IKRAizG1nK4ONYafpQL7_fPCuzx1kH-HY_GgESPMQ2CVLvEg4Pl5viBF2yFETjWqfvaXoVpQ7fo3f8U2Cozm0tm87UwVcKPrgI3CM2ttFEdNtc55U4mXC69O6jXaS8GGuoBspWL5DWGiNaCMUGuT2Vi5FNA0_osfJf47xHiilPC4FUMQvDToaMIsy_AI1M4WRDZXXgHos7D1GvugOFIZp6k_IZG_0WmW2vhi376lSqUinp5ExhxEokICDtP3uMq3IGfXyK2SwFHDIYm1YbirTY3QxXvMgojsmBrAon9HP7sUfb31FnI5LXVhYSjz-QTmi4bCZmCOr4MuVXxTHCyVwN6NBvAGQcrVzwJtRJ3kVd5apGsG8M=w900-h675-no
 
Been there, done that. I totally screwed up one of my 9A's ailerons so had to build another one.

I put a nasty kink in one of my slider frame bows while trying to tweak it to closer to perfect. That was a big one. After some anguish and head scratching I bought a new bow from Van's for cheap, took it down to a local welder, and for about $125 total, I was back in business. I have forgotten all about this until now.

Your build is not going to go to plan, guaranteed. You're going to eff up some parts. You're going to spend more money and redo some things. That's all par for the course.

You will finally eat this elephant and you will forget all the pain and suffering you went through as soon as those wheels break free of the runway for the very first time.

Keep on keeping on!
 
asw20c said:
...I thought you might like to see my expensive wall art:
Yes, I would, but I think that huge link overloaded the Forum software. Even cutting and pasting it into my browser didn't work.

Just remember, if building an airplane were easy there would be young children and old women doing it.
 
I have two pieces of "wall art". A right aileron and my first attempt at a baggage door. I've thrown away all my trim tab attempts from a long time ago. This is just a rite of passage. Grim determination is required to finish these things. Over 10,000 have done it, you can do it
 
Yes, I would, but I think that huge link overloaded the Forum software. Even cutting and pasting it into my browser didn't work.

Just remember, if building an airplane were easy there would be young children and old women doing it.

Absolutely...it takes an old children like me to build aero-panes. 😜

Hope you hang in there working thru the stages of building grief. The time I carefully checked the z-bracket orientation on my 9?s fuel tank but managed to get one bass-ackwards anyhow was my darkest midnight of the soul. Figuring out how to recover from that was in some ways as much fun as making a perfect part on the first go.

Any experienced builder can build exactly to plans. Recovering from stupid is sooooo much more interesting. That?s my story and I?m sticking to it....
 
It seemed to take me forever to get the wings done. The work is repetitive and monotonous and therefore, I believe, susceptible to those attention-to-detail errors that sap your enthusiasm. The fuselage and later kits are way more interesting and seem to go faster.

My true confession - I put the main horizontal stab spar in upside down and had to remove and flip it. I believe it was 130 rivets removed and replaced. No one can tell but me :D

I?m firmly in the ?don?t give up? crowd.
 
"Our greatest weakness lies in giving up. The most certain way to succeed is to try just one more time." Thomas Edison

I'm doing what F1 does. I got tired of working on the fuel tank, so I installed the landing light. Thus, a couple of things going at once.
 
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geeperz

I have been working on my slow-build wings for almost 2 1/2 years. About 8 months of that time I was making little to no progress because of two back to back problems I encountered (with my pitot system and bottom skins), but eventually I overcame both and had been very happy with the quality of my build. Today I finished building my flaps after about 2 months of effort (they're beautiful, by the way) only to realize that they are both junk. I misinterpreted the plans and ended up getting the rod-end subassemblies mirrored and installed backwards. In other words, the left subassembly was assembled in the right flap, and the right in the left flap. They fit fine. And it is completely irrecoverable. It kept nagging at me that the location of the nutplate didn't seem right, but I was sure I had followed the plans correctly.
There is no way to fix this problem except to buy all new parts and hardware and start over. I'm so frustrated and angry about losing this much time on the project after having just gotten past the difficulty of the bottom skins that I'm tempted to walk away from the project. It seems I'm doomed to keep working on these **** wings in perpetuity. It's that or admit defeat and lose all the time and expense of this project so far.

It took me 10 years to build a KR-2.
If I added up the pile of "non-useable" AKA junk parts my property would look like a scrap yard.
Most recently I "perfected a hand molded throttle lever. Took me about 2 months to create this thing of beauty, only to find once I installed it, I could not attain full throttle because it hit my instrument panel.
I left it on my bench as a reminder.

"Do not seek perfection- but rather build with quality"-me

Daddyman
 
My wall of shame contents:
- rudder skin complete with stiffeners with a huge crack where my back riveter went through it
- elevator skin all dimpled in the wrong direction
- a HS fiberglass fairing I oversanded

I'm lucky it didn't include the entire front fuselage!

Keep building! You'll be much happier than if you decide to stop!
 
Soldier on! While you're waiting for new parts to arrive you can convert your flaps into the coolest "coffee table with a story to tell" of anybody on your block. I'd bet that everybody who's built one of these has some junk parts in the corner of the shop somewhere. Yours happen to be big enough to repurpose into something cool! Good luck!
 
Quitting

When you get ready to quit, as yourself two qus: 1) is there something else Id rather be doing with my long term time? 2) Will my future self regret what my current self decides?

When you get your answers, then you have your decision.

A good outlook is: "We learn far more from our mistakes than we ever do our successes. Assuming you didnt kill yourself first."

And of course.....Making mistakes makes the best beer stories.....ie "No sh!t, there I was...."
 
The support here from this forum is impressive!

Clearly most everyone has been in the same place during their build and feel the pain. That may be what makes us all so proud of our creations once they're complete.

It'll happen

Cheers!
 
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Have you thought deeply about what you think is a "irrecoverable" mistake and thought about the potential of drilling out a few rivets, opening the skins, and reversing where the platenut goes? I made a few mistakes on my RV7A that I thought was disastrous but after a few days of contemplation I discovered I could take it apart and rebuild it correctly with zero negative consequences. Drilling out rivets is not difficult.
 
Find someone close by with a flying RV14 and go for a ride, that ought to rejuvenate your motivation and suppress your frustration.

The end result is worth all the frustration we go thru during the build.
 
My personal experience

Disclaimer- I am a inherently a flyer not a builder. Also I had physical challenges that made the process painful.

Yet I did build my plane. I thought I would enjoy the process. I did not.

I thought the plane would be done after the 40 hours were flown off. It wasnt. It took another 18 months to get it where i was happy with it.

In retrospect I wish i had quit early on. I feel i wasted an enormous amount of my life with this project that would have been better spent doing things with my wife.
 
Years ago, there was a -9 builder who put the left spar in the right wing and vica versa.

He didn't catch it until it was time to fit the wings in the fuselage.

Van's checked their CAD drawings and sure enough, it was possible.

I never heard what he did.

No worries, this is the pile of dead parts I had left over.


(Click to enlarge)
 
Awsome responses! Here is mine

I purchased the empannage kit in 1997. Divorce, job loss, kids going to school all got in the way until 2010 my new wife encouraged me to build on.

Well along that way we moved and i now work out of town for pretty much the week, home on three or sometimes four day weekends.

Painful, painful slow process. So many time lately I have wanted to throw the towel in, even though in my build i have only spoiled one item in the empenagge which was easily repaired. But the TIME, the TIME as the fellow up above said did i waste it?

Then i went for a transition training with a good friend and instructor in his RV 6. Lifted off Terra Firma and he said hold it at 80 knots climb out. Well I pulled back and back and back on the stick to stay at 80 knots and the plane just kept going skyward! Level and 2300 rpm i think we were doing almost 13o knots(estimated)

Motivated i came back and building on, try finding someone to go ride with and dont worry about mistakes, one thing that got me a few times before i wised up was to not only read about what you are doing but read further as to how it all connects. Sometimes that helps.

Thanks to all for sharing makes me feel more normal now, if that is possible.

Dave
 
pfftt...hold my beer!!

I've screwed up so many parts building 5 kit planes that I have enough scrap parts left over to build about 13 more airplanes!

Here's a video from my Kitplane Enthusiast YouTube channel you can watch that will show you that screwing up is normal...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n9PvgpjM0Do&t=547s

I also screwed up painting an aileron and had to strip it and repaint it...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mTECxNP4G_s

Keep plugging away. That won't be the last part you will have to replace...
 
After spending five years building my RV-7, I have been flying it over 10 years now, and can say without hesitation building the RV changed my life. It has opened up new worlds to me, in so many ways. Building the RV is on the short list of best things I've ever done. Don't give up! Just take it one day at a time. Try to do something on the project every day, no matter how trivial. Make the time. It's just a matter of priorities. There are days when the last thing you want to do is work on the plane, but tell yourself I'll just edge-smooth a little piece. You'll get into it and five minutes will turn into two hours. You get momentum going and then you WANT to work on the plane every day. As you put in the hours, you'll make less and less mistakes until it will be rare that you make a mistake. The second set of flaps will take a third of the time the first set did. Don't give up!
 
Coming clean I just messed up another part...two weeks of work probably.
Rear skirt -7A left side. I am determined to make them out of AL. I was done with this side, marked for rivets, drilled, dimpled and it must have slipped, trash. Dug another piece of material out of the bin and started cutting again. This one hurt, a lot.
Keep at it, sometimes it sucks, sometimes it's glory!
 
This isn?t stuff most of us know how to do....

The tasks of building an airplane aren’t generally things we know the nuances of as we start out. When I get to where you are, and I’ve been there a few times, just got over another hump on airplane #2, something an older gentleman who was my neighbor told me comes back very clearly:

The work teaches.

I was maybe nine or ten at the time. I kinda got it then as I fought to reassemble a carb from an old snowblower. Today, at 50, I hear it almost daily. I can generally correlate the days I hear it as being good days.

Two extra ailerons, two extra trim tabs, one xtra topside tail fairing, an extra set of con rod bearings, endless extra little brackets, a few rivet holes to nowhere, rudder and one elevator stripped and repainted, the list goes on. Yeah, I could have bought a decent 172 for half the $ ten years ago, but that wasn’t for me.
 
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Build on!

I'm with the build on crowd. Try not to let these kinds of set backs destroy your momentum. I know -- it's much easier said than done.

And while we are sharing our screw ups:

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My right elevator fell to the concrete floor while I was painting. Here is part of what I wrote in my blog at the time. Some of the feelings you may find familiar:

Did that just happen? I just stood there in stunned disbelief while my brain worked feverishly to assemble the appropriate profane response. Fortunately, I had the forethought to stockpile a great reserve of emergency profanity for just such an occasion. Logistically though, it's not such an easy thing to do. That is, to launch in an instant, the mother of all swear storms that common sense demands. In a second or two my paralysis fades and I spring into verbal action. At least that is what I thought would happen. But I find that I am unable to form intelligible words as I attempt to unload my entire arsenal at the same time. That ever so small portion of the profane artistry which finally makes it past my vocal cords intact is just one tiny, weeny, almost imperceptible, "@$%#." All the while, in in my mind, I keep seeing the Hindenburg going up. Over and over. Oh, the humanity!

Anyway, I cut off and rebuilt just the dented tip and I haven't thought about it again in over 400 hours of flying.

Keep pounding those rivets.
 
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As a non-builder...

I wanted to tell all who have contributed to this thread how much I have enjoyed reading your responses and that the encouragement given by folks is so great...VAF truly is a brother/sister-hood in situations like this!

It has given me a just an itty-bitty taste of the highs and lows of building and greatly increased my respect for those who take that path and persevere to completion.

The builder of my RV persisted (I?m sure) through some of these same problems (or maybe invented a few of his own!) but stuck with it and ended up with a flying aircraft....only to permanently lose his medical shortly after getting it out of Phase 1.

Devastating.

I took over with ~70 hours on the airframe and as a small form of respect to his efforts, I?ve kept the same N-number (numbers/letters meaningful to him) and approached ownership as more of a ?steward? effort than as ?owner?, with the realization that time passes and sooner than I want, it will be time to pass this machine I love on to another...and I want to be judged a good caretaker for my efforts.

To the moderator(s):

I would like to strongly suggest this thread be made a sticky and perhaps duplicated/moved over to the RV Tips/Techniques Forum or something else appropriate. There?s a lot of good stuff in here that I would bet someone would find encouraging in a dark, painful time in the build process. No sense in letting this disappear into the dustbin of the forum archives?

Again...thanks to all who have contributed and to the OP, I wish you the very best and hope you keep building!!

Rob S.
 
I'm with the build on crowd. Try not to let these kinds of set backs destroy your momentum. I know -- it's much easier said than done.

And while we are sharing our screw ups:

v-pdc36AkUE1DngZhZv9lXwk62i4V_MbrZUnANXr94W7I8onVpvUid7KvhHzFgeLAqkb0f6iQsBlo4GO_IQHxHmqpPCruxyhWe67EEnkMnO7Cjtr23SYQLuxcFfdITFgq7GKI4oQsppGJcUxo8uuaJFM43wkaKL9--mL-Q_YgNyKfth5DMypF-NFscbjBQiwahLY6Xe6yosIFD0WZTZOeHB2B75VvwjoYqj1H6xhYuZU34w-oezEXmyqJBOq32YplJvTJowrstTlKQoiDlcH6lgBj3kdsd0aY33ohAH1l7JblLvT2Lk4gYv8tVkioY8ZIAOXx-qcDnwNK_vtl7E2OtjFjiotaMHBWvB1ASHVfNnz3GkvULJBSX_vBQX1P-NzwxbNU1NsgXKcwcnc1v6qqIkLe2Q9P8oGGcu-D6IwgFN0F5hRXqfAwS7dSbtkcY05O-rDyhKSN-GdHZvmiXKLYTPKxwMX7wT9wsqlCS-49sKxzKwvqysXFF1lsPNK-9LncjaEwrbxGDO50PiTnIwjGVMf-H1U7s7B6uLfEyEd2NgcuVOTLRFEzwdkxDd9Wdq5kG50p0MTGjyNZbtdwFwT4Gc1cjw6EMvBpVR9Xo9EuIXiWYIpqFg1q1QPkkjR6REujBY2evxp2wiCR8e9arVTkavLcfog-b-z5pQ9HfEoqZ2hkmC7LxJDNPWBHEF_YOWweVcIxveSiwOuz_6HYBaY97G6-A=w1024-h768-no


My right elevator fell to the concrete floor while I was painting. Here is part of what I wrote in my blog at the time. Some of the feelings you may find familiar:

Did that just happen? I just stood there in stunned disbelief while my brain worked feverishly to assemble the appropriate profane response. Fortunately, I had the forethought to stockpile a great reserve of emergency profanity for just such an occasion. Logistically though, it's not such an easy thing to do. That is, to launch in an instant, the mother of all swear storms that common sense demands. In a second or two my paralysis fades and I spring into verbal action. At least that is what I thought would happen. But I find that I am unable to form intelligible words as I attempt to unload my entire arsenal at the same time. That ever so small portion of the profane artistry which finally makes it past my vocal cords intact is just one tiny, weeny, almost imperceptible, "@$%#." All the while, in in my mind, I keep seeing the Hindenburg going up. Over and over. Oh, the humanity!

Anyway, I cut off and rebuilt just the dented tip and I haven't thought about it again in over 400 hours of flying.

Keep pounding those rivets.

You might think of all those of us who have reached back into our history of swear words for like events; like cracking our canopy on installation.
 
This is a magnificent statement:

?Did that just happen? I just stood there in stunned disbelief while my brain worked feverishly to assemble the appropriate profane response. Fortunately, I had the forethought to stockpile a great reserve of emergency profanity for just such an occasion.?

It should be on a t-shirt or poster. Stockpiling a reserve of emergency profanity is something people should be taught in school, especially those who waste profanity in ordinary discussion. I have never understood what those folks do in an emergency.
 
I might as well have ordered two empennage kits given the amount of stuff I have screwed up!

Haven’t even started riveting yet.

I’m putting it down to a steep learning curve, and I would rather make these mistakes on the tail than on something more expensive. But I do have moments where I wonder if I’m cut out for this.
 
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Over, Quit...

"Over? quit? Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? **** no, its not over." Not to minimize your frustrations with a quote from Animal House but on a serious note: All great endeavors have moments of doubt. It will be nothing more than great, funny story in a year from now.
 
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Edgewood? ASW20? You must be a glider guider out at Moriarty. Great place. Great fun.

On topic. The RV-14 is awesome and very worth the effort. Putting your heart and soul into something and then conquering it is the point. Sometimes it's sand castles, ice sculptures or sidewalk chalk art. Things appreciated for the process rather than a lasting usable result. The process and learning is one of the best parts, even if sometimes only recognizable later. Yes, it sux right now. No candy coating about it. But this is precisely the thing you will look back on one day and appreciate your aircraft even more. It is the hard, complicated problems we step up to fix that makes us more whole. More complete. More satisfied in the end.

My very good friend Dennis built an RV-8 with his father. It was a 11 year slow build by two fellows who started from zero knowledge. At the beginning of the project one of Dennis' mantras was that he wanted to, "Savor the experience". A few years down the road found Dennis in the tail cone in 120 degree weather holding a bucking bar while his dad stood outside with a rivet gun hollering, "Are you savoring the experience?". It was a quote that got thrown around alot during the stressful parts of the build. Good guys. And the end result was one of my favorite airplanes of all time.

So, as for me. Did you know if you are building an Avid Flyer or Kitfox it is very easy to build two right or left wings instead of one of each? So much so the Avid factory had a wing hotline where builders who did that could swap one wing with another builder who built two of the opposite side. Please don't ask me how I know. That was a bad day in Flat Rock. What's more I was an aerospace design engineer in Seattle at the time. So you are doing just fine. And the RV-14 is super nice and worth it.

I am putting a newly redone engine on my RV-8 right now and when it's tested I would be happy to come up and visit you in Edgewood and let you have a go. I have a friend up there I need to see anyway. We airplane people types are good. We can count on each other.

Thanks for starting a great thread. In frustration for sure. But you hit a nest of people who know exactly how you feel. ��
 
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"Over? quit? Was it over when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor? **** no, its not over." Not to minimize your frustrations with a quote from Animal House but on a serious note: All great endeavors have moments of doubt. It will be nothing more than great, funny story in a year from now.

I love the quote! "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming..."
That is what I say from time to time...

Helps pass the time...
 
I might as well have ordered two empennage kits given the amount of stuff I have screwed up!

Haven’t even started riveting yet.

I’m putting it down to a steep learning curve, and I would rather make these mistakes on the tail than on something more expensive. But I do have moments where I wonder if I’m cut out for this.

It's been a long time since I was on the emp, but as I recall I screwed up more than a few things and made several trips down to Vans. Fast forward to the side skirts on the slider and maybe 2-3 sets later it's good. Everyone on here has different battles, challenges, etc. but we all have them.

I am not even flying yet but am finally getting close-ish and I say soldier on- stop, have a beer, organize your tools or take your wife out to dinner. You'll miss it and then head back in.
 
I might as well have ordered two empennage kits given the amount of stuff I have screwed up!

I was fortunate enough to have a very well known builder on these forums inspect my tail kit at about the 1/2 way stage. One comment that stuck from that visit was something to the effect of "it's unfortunate Van's has you build the empennage first; it's the hardest kit to build."

Or, another one from a really good friend of mine: "You build the first one 3 times."
 
Yea, there surely can be lots of rebuilding. I elected to shell out about $450 for the tipper canopy metal parts after trying to get everything to fit, but swiss-cheesed the aluminum too much to be airworthy.

For some of the operations, a do-over is the perfect execution of what you learned the first time around. Frustrating, and sometimes expensive, but ultimately happy in the end.

Be patient, and keep pounding! (and bum a ride in an RV for a motivation boost!)
 
I’m glad to have found this thread. It’s been months since I’ve even visited the forum after a large setback on the HS back in May. Every step of this process has been incredibly difficult for me, but that was part of the reason I wanted to attempt the project. As the flying season comes to a close in my part of the world, perhaps I can get back to the business of building. I think my experience on the empennage so far has taught me that I need to pick up extra time at work and save for QB options. I think my build timeline will grow due to that financial pressure.
 
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