Tools

What tools you need will depend on if you are building from a kit or from plans and if you are doing an all metal, composite, or rag and tube airplane.  The Kitfox is a rag and tube design and could be completed with minimal tools.

	First step is to empty and organize the garage shop - this is a huge job if your garage is anything like ours was.
	With the garage now empty, its time to enlist the help of friends to get the crate off the truck- just like a model airplane only bigger.
	With the box in the garage, its time to break down the crate and inventory all the parts - lots and lots of little parts.  You really appreciate the value that comes from a kit plane as it would take forever to find and order all these parts on your own.  The inventory process is important and lets you touch all the parts so when you later read about them in the manual you will know where they are and what they look like.
	Reading and re-reading the manual, over and over again till absolutely everything makes sense.  It makes for pretty dull viewing on a webcam but most of the elapsed time spent working on the plane is spent reading the manual and figuring things out.  The price for haste can be high so its not worth drilling a single hole until everything is crystal clear.  Building 'recipe-style' where you don't look ahead in the instructions will certainly result in disaster.  To be successful at building a plane you need to be good at following directions and have the patience to test fit everything before fixing anything permanently in place.
	Although theoretically you can assemble this rag and tube airplane with only hand tools, some large power tools can save a lot of time and money.  My first tool on the list is a metal lathe - a small one will do, mine is a bit overkill.  Although it seems like I always have to roll the band saw out of the way, it is the one saw worth keeping in the garage.  My miter saw and table saw really haven't been needed.  A drill press is really a necessity and can be obtained inexpensively from www.grizzly.com as can the band saw.  A number of aviation specific hand tools are also required: rivet squeezer swaging tool for nicopress fittings on brake cable ends flare tool for brakes and fuel lines (not automotive) cordless drill or variable speed air drill good set of drill numbered drill bits scale or balance for mixing of epoxy
	Much of the aircraft is fastened together with rivets and epoxy, pretty easy materials to master.  Here are some of the skills that are required: ability to understand and follow directions! basic metalworking - cutting, filing, sanding, polishing, drilling basic woodworking - cutting, sanding, finishing epoxy work - surface preparation, mixing riveting - drilling, clecoing, deburring, popping/squeezing nuts - cotter pin usage in castle nuts, torquing of nuts tubing fittings - cutting, flaring, attaching camlocs - drilling, riveting, installing
	Much time in building the aircraft is spent building little parts out of aluminum angle, aluminum bar stock, plywood or fiberglass.

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