December, 18, 2006
Well that was a quick chunk of change...OUCH!
I ordered the QB Fuselage today and felt a twinge when I called my bank and ordered the wire transfer to pay for it to lock in 2006 prices.
December 28, 2006
I had the holes for the electrical conduit already drilled but I did not have any bushings or grommets to put in there. Initially I was going to use this bulky blue tubing but instead opted to put 1/2 diameter flex hose that drip irrigation systems use. Its easy to bend, and I should be able to carry what I want to carry down it based on my needs. I went shopping at Lowe's and found some 7/8 OD 1/2 ID snap bushings that work like a charm. My sister Amanda and I went to Lowe's together, I think she got a charge out of how excited I was to find the right bushing.
I then installed the bushings in the ribs and ran the 1/2 pipe in the wing.
Pictures look great don't they? Only problem is that I have to take the conduit out so that I can rivet in the top skin. The conduit blocks the wing skin and main spar. It would also block where the leading edge would get riveted on.
January 1, 2007
It is a new year and the project has taken a back seat to life once again. There were too many things at work and too many things at home. I could not count how many times I wanted to work on the plane but had to put it off because I was either working, cleaning house or doing something else that was a priority.
I had to pull out the conduit because I needed to access the main spar and skins when they get riveted on. The conduit will get re-installed after the top skin is on the wing.
January 2, 2007
I pulled the leading edge off and put the LE in the cradle so that I could work on it. I heated up the soldering iron and made my marks so that I could get the vinyl off where the holes are at.
January 3, 2007
I removed the vinyl where it needed to come off and un-clecoed the LE. I took everything out of the stand and so began the process of deburring the leading edge. I was able to get to the outside of the ribs before I decided to call it a night.
January 4, 2007
I deburred the inside of the ribs and spent some time double checking straightness. I was pretty satisfied after checking that all was looking good.
January 5, 2007
I deburred the leading edge skin and set it aside for the moment. This went a lot faster than I had anticipated.
January 6, 2007
Built the crate to ship the fuel tanks to Evan Johnson. This took me most of the day and 3 trips to Lowe's for the right size wood etc.
January 7, 2007
Ordered the SafeAir1 Pitot/Static and AOA kits after deciding that a Dynon D100 is the route I am going for EFIS on the panel.
January 8, 2007
Dimpled the rear spar and countersunk the rear spar where the aileron reinforcements are installed. If you try to dimple these, it will distort the rear spar.
January 9 2007
Dimpled the leading edge skin and put it back in the cradle.
January 10, 2007
Dimpled the outboard top skin and started on the inboard top skin.
January 11, 2007
Dimpled the remaining holes on the inboard top skin.
January 12, 2007
Finally got all the extra parts together for the fuel tank assembly and packed up the all of the tank parts to ship off to Evan. I had to order the flop tubes from Van's and while I was at it I ordered two landing/taxi light kits. I also ordered the fuel injection return lines and parts from Aircraft Spruce. Once it was all packed up I ran out of packing material and couldn't close out the box.
January 13, 2007
It's too cold to prime anything today so I didn't get much done except cleaning up around the shop and dimpling all of the main wing ribs. Seems like this cold will never end. Not really sure why I am complaining, come May I will be begging for any temperature lower than 100.
January 14, 2007
I broke out the instructions for the leading edge landing lights to see how those will go in, not so sure I am ready to cut a hole in my leading edge once I get it completed. I also drilled to size the tie down bracket hole in the leading edge skin.
January 16, 2007
Countersunk the top of the main spar.
January 17, 2007
Countersunk the bottom of the main spar.
January 18, 2007
Countersunk for the rivets that attach the main ribs to the spar along where the tank attaches. There is no callout for this where I could see but I decided that it would do to get those out of the way now.
January 19, 2007
Riveted those rivets from the countersinking yesterday.
January 20, 2007
I drilled out the brass bushings on the aileron belcrank and used some synthetic grease on the bushing before installing it and re-installing the belcrank brackets. I could swear that the instructions say to install those when you are installing the tie down bracket.
January 27, 2007
Finally, the weather broke enough to get the leading edge ribs prepped and primed. That took about 4 hours to do because I had to re-learn everything about using the spray gun.
January 31, 2007
Shipped my fuel tank parts to Evan Johnson and surprisingly it was only 65$ and that was insured for $1,200.
February 1, 2007
I clecoed together the leading edge and found that if I started it outside the cradle and moved it in the cradle when doing the topside that it worked out much easier. I started riveting the leading edge.
February 2, 2007
No work on the plane because I took Jenni to the George Strait concert. The seats were freaking awesome because we were on the floor and right next to the alley that the performers use to come out.
February 10, 2007
Today was a lot of little stuff. I built the bracket for the Gretz pitot mount and drilled that to the rib and skin. First I fabricated a bracket out of some angle stock, rounded the edges on that and used cleco clamps to hold it to the backing plate for drilling.
Here is the Gretz backing plate from the top of the wing after back drilling the skin to it.
Here is the view from the bottom skin.
Next was to do a mortal sin at least from my perspective. I had to cut a hole in my bottom wing skin. The first thing I did was to mark the location of the opening on the inside of the bottom of the skin, then I drilled several #19 holes and made enough room to get in there with a saw and cut the major portion of the skin away for the opening. Next thing was to use the grinder to remove it out a bit further to the line and even a little over it. The final step was the ScotchBrite wheel on the air grinder to smooth it all out and make the final shape of the cutout. Here is the finished product:
I then pulled the skin off and set it asides so I could run the lines from my SafeAir1 kit. But wait, I did not decided on the Dynon D100 until a month ago. This thing has been riveted together for some time. I still have to drill the hole and install snap bushings for the AoA tube. This is going to be fun.
First, I drilled a #40 pilot hole where I wanted to run the line, then I pulled out an appropriately sized block of wood and put it so that it was between two lightening holes and back drilled that to use as a template.
I then drilled all the ribs to #40 and got to the wing walk doublers and realized I was not going to be able to drill those to final size. Crap, what now. Here was my solution:
Drilled all the holes out to 1/4" then used a cone shaped stone grinding bit on the drill to enlarge to the final size of the snap bushing. This was working out great. Just do a little on each side at a time and you will get some nice looking holes. Now for the wing walk doublers.
I drilled those out to 1/4" and left the drill there and used the bit to enlarge the hole. Then I took out the fine grinding bit and used that to smooth that out BY HAND. That a pain in the ass. All in all everything looked really good when I was done. I then installed the pitot line and AoA line in the wing. Here are some pictures of that installation.
The last picture shows the pitot connectors that the SafeAir1 kit uses. Odd little connectors, the tech at SafeAir1 described them to be "like Chinese finger cuffs". They install in a snap and are on tight. The little grey piece can be used to loosen and remove the connector but it is not recommended. No worries on being able to rivet the top skin on - I checked.
I ordered the Dynon Heated Pitot when I was still thinking of going with the Dynon EFIS. Since I have changed to and subsequently bought the Advanced Flight Systems EFIS, I will not be using the Dynon AOA feature. So I removed the blue tubing that was supposed to be for that and used the hole for the AFS AOA. Worked perfectly!!!
Here is a picture of that. The electrical connection on the right is for the heated pitot controller (2 power and 1 failed sense wire). The AOA lines run the full length of the wing so I had to make a turn here to stay out of the way of other stuff.
Wiring for the heated pitot controller required some ingenuity on my part. I had to find a way to support the wires from the controller, make it so that I could disconnect the controller for service and mount the controller so it could be removed. Here is what I came up with.
The flat piece of aluminum holds the wire bundle in place and is just a piece of aluminum strip pop-riveted between the ribs. The controller is mounted so I can remove it. The only tough part is the electrical connections. They are on the far side of the bay and will require a longer screwdriver or maybe some use of "the force" to envision where I am reaching to get to it, but it is still accessible from the access in the next bay inboard.
Installing the AOA ports was easy enough. You just have to follow the directions from AFS, measure carefully and you will have the ports located in the correct location without too much hassle. I was able to install these in an afternoon.
AFS gives model specific information for your AOA installation. Once I measured for the upper and lower port installation locations. I drilled the first hole by measuring and then used the ports on the AOA itself to match drill the installation holes. AFS is kind enough to send you a #60 drill bit with the kit. The #60 drill bit is used to open the port itself. I drilled the holes and used my blind dimple tool to dimple the skin for the screw heads. I used some Blue RTV to seal the ports to the inside of the skin. Here are a couple of pictures of my installation.
This is the close-up of the top port. You can see where the RTV got on the crew head when I put it on.
This is the upper port again. The conduit above it is for the landing light. This will be important later on.
The upper port with the plumbing installed.
The lower port with the plumbing installed
I used some spare conduit I had to secure the plumbing and keep it from moving around. Then I used the other conduit for the landing light to secure it to for additional stability.
