It's time to make the hydraulic lines!

The hydraulic system in this plane controls the landing gear and brakes, and there are a pretty large number of lines needed to conduct that pressure.

This job requires a large amount of tube-bending. THIS is who I WANTED in the shop to help, but since he was not there, I had to do the job myself.

So here is how you make the lines:

First, get some 1/4" aluminum tubing and cut it to the right lengths with a band-saw"(somehow, over a 10-day work period, I only managed to cut myself on the band-saw once!)

Now, simply BEND the tube with the tube-bender seen below:

And see the result here:

OK the tubes are bent? Then now put on the little blue fittings that you will use to securely attach the tube to the fitting it will ultimately be attached to in the airplane.

See? The fittings are in place.

Now yo urun this thingy that spreads out the end of the aluminum tube. This is called FLARING.

And here is the end result!

I cut the tube to the right size, bent it with the bender, put the fittings in place that will let it attach to the airplane, and flared out the end so the fittings do not go anywhere! Not that hard!

Yes, I did EVERY SINGLE HYDRAULIC LINE IN THE AIRPLANE, most of them shown below! About 2 days of work for me.