As I have been working on getting a US Airframe & Powerplant Certificate I have also been spending some of my extra time jumping through the hops of getting a US Commercial Pilot Certificate with an Instrument rating. Which has involved a couple written exams and what seems to be a lot of paperwork. The paperwork may have been a lot less if I had of just filled the forms out error free the firs time ;-). Now that this is out of the way I'm starting preparation for my first round of oral and practical exams that coincide with the general written exam I took last fall and the airframe written that I have scheduled on the 24th of April. Once these are complete I will be halfway there so to speak as I will have the A portion of the final goal for the A&P Certificate. I have attached a few recent pictures of the different projects I have been working on in class.
First up is the alternator project that we each were given. I forgot to take a before picture but there was a couple left untouched which gives a good idea of what my started out looking like. Yes they are car alternators but they function pretty much the same as airplane alts.
Here is the first picture on my project specifically, at this point I have disassembled cleaned with mineral spirits and started to bead blast the case.
At this point all the cleaning is done and the testing of the winding's is complete, and the first coat of paint has been applied.
Someone leaving parts from their project behind on my work space. A nasty trick if someone wasn't paying attention and later tries to figure out where this extra piece was suppose to go.
Painting finished and getting ready to reassemble, and put on the bench tester.
Project complete and pasted the bench test. I wouldn't however want to put this in my vehicle unless I was in a pinch. Even after repacking the bearings it was still pretty noisy, not to mention there wasn't much left of the slip rings after I dressed the groves out of it.
All in all though it did work which is better than some of the other projects some of which fell victim to impatience and large hammers and others just outright didn't work from the get go.
This and the following pics are of a patch on a wet wing style of fuel tank that used to be a part of a Musketeer. It's probably a good thing that this tank will never have to hold fuel again. The hole that I'm patching is the one on the right the left hole is where the fuel cap goes
The hole started out small but because it is inaccessible to the other side I had to make it large enough to get tools in through itself, by tools I mean a bucking bar which is a smooth piece of metal that is used in conjunction with a rivet gun to drive the aluminum rivets that will be used to hold my doubler in place. The tape is helping me draw out the placement of all the rivet holes I will drill into the tank skin and the double that is sitting above the tape in the pic.
With the doubler held in place with a couple cleco's I can now prepare a door that will screw on to the nutplates that I will rivet on to the doubler as well.
The black swill is in place and the clecos are being replaced with rivets.
The custom made bucking bar to reach in the hole to buck the back side of the rivets.
All the rivets bucked managed to get most of them in without to many smiley faces.
The rest of the black swill is installed the door is screwed in place should be leak proof in theory.
