Skills

What skills you need to build your homebuilt aircraft 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 some basic skills.  The short video clips below will give you some idea of the skills required to build an airplane.

	Following Directions, the most important skill!  Most modern kit airplanes not only save you the trouble of having to find and buy thousands of little parts but they come with very well written step-by-step instructions, like a big model airplane.  You must read and re-read 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.
	Patience!   So much of building a homebuilt aircraft involves patience, remember its the journey not the destination that is important otherwise you would be buying a used cessna.  The first exercise in patience comes when you get your kit and need to inventory all 6,523 parts but it is very 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.
	basic metalworking - cutting, filing, sanding, polishing, drilling.  Many small brackets need to be made like this one for the control column.  Most are made from aluminum 'L' stock or bar stock.
	basic woodworking - cutting, sanding, finishing.  Almost every kit-plane will require some basic woodworking skills, even an all-metal aircraft.  Several wooden jigs need to be constructed, shown is a jig used to make the flapperon attach brackets.
video	epoxy work - surface preparation, mixing.  Epoxy adhesive is essential for all types of experimental aircraft construction.  Mixing the structural adhesive (epoxy) needs to be done with care and is much like a chemistry class experiment - everything must be immaculate and exact.  The surfaces to be attached must be roughened chemically clean for maximum adhesion.  Taking a spoonful of part A and a spoonful of part B just will not do, max strength is only achieved with the precise ratio of parts A and B specified by the manufacturer.
video	solid riveting - drilling, clecoing, deburring, squeezing.  Even an all-wood experimental aircraft will use rivets on occasion.  These solid rivets can be squeezed if they are near the edge and otherwise must be done in a more traditional fashionn.
video	pop riveting - drilling, clecoing, deburring, squeezing.  For places on the airplane where it is not possible to access the back side, pop-rivets are a godsend.
video	nuts - torquing of nuts.  The high quality AN bolts and nuts used on an aircraft must be properly torqued to function safely, a torque wrench must be used.
video	tubing fittings - cutting, flaring, attaching.  Fuel connections using aluminum tubing must be properly flared to 37 degrees to insure a reliable leak-free connection.
video coming soon	camlocs - drilling, riveting, installing
video	fabric -covering and rib lacing.  Best information is a DVD put out by the EAA SportAir workshops entitled "Aircraft Fabric Covering", get your copy from the EAA.
video coming soon	painting

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