This is really it! It's the first day real airplane building. I arrived at the SynergyAir hangar a little before 8:00am. By 8:30, Things were happening. This is the official day one -- the actual start date..

The morning starts with removing parts from the boxes and removing plastic wrap from the parts.

Very quickly, it turns into work deburring parts to smooth out those rough edges. The quality of cuts and shear work on the metal parts proves to be highly variable.

All the parts are marked with a Sharpie pen. The ink will show though the primer. This takes the guesswork out of what goes where once the priming is done.

Sanding the rear (HS) spar reinforcement bars to a smooth burr-free finish took at least an hour.

After cleanup sanding, what were sharp edges with lots of nicks and divots, looks like this.

No matter how sophisticated the tool set you buy, sooner or later you get back to the basics. This is the HS-710 reinforcing angle that must be trimmed to a mild taper. Careful here to leave good hole clearance...

There are plenty of little ribs to be snipped out or angled or trimmed. All of course, then need to be smoothed and deburred...

It's mid-day and lots of parts have been deburred. Some, like this forward spar can be drilled and fit for assembly.

Yet another pic of the front spar -- since it's the first of the components to come together, it deserves 3 shots! Wow! Am I starting to get the feeling!

Here I have the nut plates ready to be riveted to the trim access reinforcement plate.

Some real airplane building! rivets are being driven!

The nut plates riveted in place.

More parts almost ready to rivet!

Above and below are the mating of the bottom rudder rib with the rudder spar. The rudder horn and horn brace are at the union point at the bottom.

I should have put this pic in earlier. All the parts laid out to be primed. The primer dries in minutes. For most parts, this seems to work better than hanging them, if you have the right spray equipment.

Oops! I don't remember what this was I was riveting. Hmmm, looks like the left rudder skin. So, don't skin me if I'm wrong. OK, that's the last try at humor, almost....

Yes, it is rudder skin. That's Wally Anderson of SynergyAir saying, "A little more pressure, Kathleen -- Keep the gun vertical, Kathleen -- Ouch! That was my finger, Kathleen." but, we're having fun and finally, finally building an airplane!

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