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Sonerai II build by Kenneth

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Lostman

Lostman

Well-Known Member
Joined
Jul 17, 2015
Messages
93
Location
Mount Holly, NJ
Hello all,

I'm fairly new to this group but have been around airplanes for a while now. I currently own a flying Teenie Two (for sale) and have many other "toys", some of which used to fly.

I picked up a partial "kit" Sonerai II last month from another member on this board. It was a tack welded fuselage and an original Monnett 9 rib wing kit. Of course I will be doing the S-mod to it so it will have enough gross weight to fly me and my wife (if she should ever choose to go up with me).

During the past four weeks of owning this I've spent probably more than 24 hours pouring over the plans and going through inventory. Many more than that actually compiling a list of materials, ordering and gathering parts as well as researching what not to do to these airplanes online.

So far I've built a work bench from the engine crate and started welding the fuselage. Tonight marked a big milestone, I made two large orders of materials and should have everything to finish all the welding in the next two weeks. I have a complete set of tail feathers that came from a flying (wrecked) Sonerai II (Ray Bergner N224RB). The vertical stabilizer is going to be slightly larger than plans and the horizontal stabilizer will have to be rebuild to plans since it is off dimensionally. It has the correct amount of square area but I would have to move the jack screw since it is only 17.5" deep at the root instead of the 20" per the plans dimension. It might be easier to move the upright tube in the fuselage at this point though since the craftsmanship on these components are excellent.

I'll update more when I have done more.
 
Luckily my lack of posting on this build isn't due to not building. I currently have all the fuselage welded and am working on finishing up the turtle deck and canopy frame tomorrow. The pedals, controls, vertical stabilizer, jack screw assembly, tail feathers and seats are all finished up. I'm pretty much up to a point of finishing stringer stubs, a few things like throttle lever plate and final rigging for the fuselage.

I may need to cut the vertical 5/8" square tube that holds the spar carry through though. When I welded it in I did it according to plans, but it is so tight on the spar carry through that there isn't any space for any adjustment or even paint for that matter. I've been reading about changing the angle of incidence slightly (1-2degrees) and like that idea. I don't suppose that the wings will allow any twist, or that it would be a good idea to do it that way either. I'm thinking of making the smallest cuts I can with a dremel so that I can just change the angle to the top longeron by 2 degrees and let it go at that. Anyone see any issues with doing it that way?
 
As far as I know, changing the incidence on a Sonerai is only beneficial on the Sonerai '1'….I have no experience with an altered incidence on the Sonerai 2….
 
Today I put in another 7 hours or work. I started by getting the turtle deck finished up. I wend with a much lower turtle deck after seeing the red on that looks like an RV-4. Then I got the canopy frame mostly welded up except for the hinges. All in all, I'm getting much closer to getting the welding portion finished up. I'll likely run out of acetylene and have to wait 6-8 weeks for my tank to get tested before I can finish it too. Guess I'll move on to building wings if/when that happens.
 

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Raceair said:
As far as I know, changing the incidence on a Sonerai is only beneficial on the Sonerai '1'….I have no experience with an altered incidence on the Sonerai 2….
Click to expand...

Guess I'll just leave it at 90. I'm still going to have to do something about clearance issues though. It's that tight. I hate it when I hold tolerances exactly to plans and then something gets me in the end. Oh well, shouldn't be a big deal to fix.
 
I did not mod the spar carry through tubes but I did lower the trailing edge of the wing at the rear spar carry through. It helped bring the tail more on step in cruise.
 
Did you have enough space in the fuselage to tilt the front spar carry through for this or did you end up being able to gently pressure the wing into dropping the trailing edge? I'm guessing it wouldn't be easy to twist the spar that way, but may it is.
 
I'm back to building. I figured a new year, new energy! However today I read the entire wing build book. I found several things I have questions about. I will post them up in another thread so this one doesn't get overtaken by questions rather than build process.

I also ordered a bunch of material that to finish up the fuselage tabs, and small parts, plus engine install.
 
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