About to Throw in the Towel

[DrillBit]

Originally Posted by snopercod

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....

[JHartline]

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

I?m firmly in the ?don?t give up? crowd.

[RV10Man]

"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.

[daddyman]

Originally Posted by asw20c

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

[kiljoy]

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!

[burtj]

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!

[maniago]

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...."

[wcalvert]

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!

[sglynn]

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.

[Bavafa]

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.