Category Archives: School

Aviation, Philosophy, School, Tools

too much going on…

Wow, it has been way too long since I last posted. My sincere apologies to you. School has been keeping me very busy. I started out with five classes and ended up dropping one, as it turns out that was a really good move.

The hitch in my giddy-up? My choices in scheduling. The original plan was to spread things out over the week, one or two classes a day four days a week, this turned out to be a bad idea. I was hoping to leave plenty of time for work, ya… right. With everything spread out, I am always scrambling for something and there is always something due.

Next term I will be trying a new schedule format, all of my classes on one or two days back to back. I would make for one or two crazy days a week, but less transit time and more focus time. Thats the idea anyway.,

While I am on the subject of school, some interesting developments have been brewing. First off, I have been elected as President of the SJCC Philosophy Club. I have gotten a few quizzical looks from people when they find out my major is Aeronautical/Aerospace Engineering and I am hanging around with the philosophy and theology majors. It is rather amusing actually.

Along with my Philosophy Club activities I have been given some interesting opportunities. One in particular will get at least my foot in the door at San Jose State University a full year and a half earlier than expected. There is a really interesting program in the new Global Studies department that is participating with the Soliya project and I have been invited to be one of the students involved. This would mean registering as a SJSU student, which by the was is awesome.

Why is this awesome? Well for one, I have been wanting to join Alpha Eta Roe, an aviation professional fraternal organization and it would make life much easier if I was a student at a chartered school, SJSU. Another reason is that I am planning on transferring to SJSU once I finish my General AA at San Jose City College to pursue my BS and MS in engineering. It just sort of tidies things up a bit.

Another education thing going on is that I am hoping to wrap up that ongoing drama filled AS in Aviation Operations at Mountain State University that I started in 2006. If I can just squeeze one class in per term there while taking one class per term at SJSU and three or four classes at SJCC I can get that one done too. Thats a lot of schooling going on.

This is why it has been a little while since my last post. On an aviation note, I did pick up some new plains at my newly-opened Harbor Freight Tools. It made my tool-geek heart skip a beat when I saw that they were finally opening a store closer than 30 miles away. This one is less than a mile! WOOT!

😉

Things are leveling off in my schedule as I get back into the academic swing, so I expect to be back in the shop this weekend. With even a small bit of luck I will have something to post about on Monday, so stay tuned for next weeks exciting episode.

Until then, blue skies and tailwinds.
~FlyBoyJon

Aviation, Ramblings, School

10 days since my last confession

Ack! I had hoped to get something posted by now. Well here we go, this post will cover a lot of ground, aviation and otherwise.

In the other category… A lot of stuff has been going in my world over the last few years. I started an AS in Aviation Operations degree program at Mountain State University in 2006. With my aviation experience credit and classes completed, I have 50 units out of 60 for my degree. Before I could finish the program my mother passed away. I had to drop out in the middle of the semester so my grades took a nose drive. All of my aviation credits are pass/no pass so thy don’t affect my GPA. My Presidents List earning 4.0 was now a pathetic 1.8. To keep my financial aid I need to maintain a minimum of 2.0 which presents a problem for me.

To get my GPA back in order I decided to go to San Jose City College and take some classes. I made this decision a while ago but recently I had a bit of an epiphany. It became clear that I needed to do more than I had planed back in 2006. I decided to pursue an Aeronautical Engineering Degree which means I need to cover all of my GEs. Very few units at MSU are transferable to San Jose State so I need to fulfill them at SJCC, hence a complete over-haul of my education plan. I still want to finish my AS at MSU, but that will have to be part time while I work on my AA at SJCC. I’m guessing you can see why I have been busy. I start classes again on Monday.

Now for some of that airplane stuff. Today I worked on the firewall bulkhead and the stern post. I started by marking out everything I wanted to cut. The Doug Fir I am using for the core of the stern post was laid out on a piece of 1″ x 6″ board and the skins for the stern post were laid out on a piece â…›” ply. With the wood for the stern post cut out I turned my attention to the firewall bulkhead.

   

The work operations for the firewall bulkhead included cutting out the block shape and drilling the holes to attach the stiffeners. Once the stiffeners are in place the beveled edges on the sides and top can be cut as well the curves in the upper corners and drilling all of the holes. I cut the rough shape and drilled the stiffeners. Then I bolted it all up.

   

The aft side of the bulkhead looks good, the forward side however, didn’t come out the way I was hoping it would. The countersinks are a little too deep, so the screw heads that are supposed to be flush are a bit deeper that they should be. The only solution for this predicament is to cut out a new firewall. While I’m not happy about it, I would rather hold myself to a higher standard than let something slide.

I didn’t feel like pulling out the table saw again so I decided to wait until tomorrow to redo the firewall. I still had some time to keep working so I bonded the Doug Fir lumber for the stern post core. Another to-do for tomorrow will be to bond the skins to the core.

   

Since I don’t have any bar-clamps *hint, hint* I had to come up with another solution to keeping the wood firmly in place. This is where my improvised cord clamp comes it. It is just some nylon cord with the ends tied together. Take a piece of scrap wood, put in between the work piece and the cord and start twisting. Simple but effective. The T-88 structural adhesive does not need a lot of pressure to hold the joint together, in fact you need to be sure not to apply too much pressure or the adhesive will squeeze out of the joint, so the cord clamp works well.

That wraps it up for today. Tomorrow is another day in the shop so we’ll see how much gets done.

Until next time, blue skies and tail winds,
~FlyBoyJon