Fuselage II
Didn't take any pictures of us actually laying on the topcoat, but here are some finished shots. The grey matches the middle of the seats. Coincidence? Nope. The panel will be a darker grey that matches the outside of the seats. These seats are made by DJ at Cleaveland Tool. The quality is excellent, and I'm really happy with them. Dave hasn't seen any of this in the flesh yet! Poor Dave!
Working on the front fuselage area now, and got most of it sorted. This was being held up for some time by a lack of radio stack. See panel page for more info on the radios! Here you can see the fuse block panel that swings down. It's held up by a camlock to the back of the panel. The doublers on the sub panel are for the Blue Mountain autopilot controller. First time around, I mispositioned it. Hence the rows of extra rivet holes down the edges. Oops.
5/9/04 8 hours
Yesterday, I didn't get to go to the hangar because I thought I'd keep 'her indoors' sweet by taking her flower shopping, and then planting them all with her in the front garden. They look pretty good. I modified the shape of the lawn and made a nice flower bed. She was well happy!
Today I decided to take a break from wiring, and figured it might be a good time to move on and finish the forward aft skin. I was actually at the hangar longer today, but spent some time cleaning up, and taking out the rubbish. It was a nice day today, right up until the thunder storms hit at about 7pm. I had to shut the hangar door down a bit then!
First though, I made the bagage floor tunnel cover. I don't why I didn't do this earlier, then it could've been painted in the first paint batch. It's not like it took a long time to make! I didn't take a piccy though.
Here's the skin cleco'd on ready for matchdrilling.
Here is the first skin stiffener. These were pretty tricky to make! They're supplied too long, and since the curvature changes along it's length, it's difficult to judge how much from each end to cut off. I cheated, and had a look at Camerons plane, and the one Mike is helping with, and used them as a guide. In the end, I just kept trimming and trimming until I had it fitted. Once I'd done one, I copied it in mirror image for the other side.
Here, the stiffeners are both completed, the skin is match drilled, de-burred and dimpled. All I need to do now is paint the visible surfaces on the inside, and rivet it on.
Tomorrow, I think I'll make the covers that go along the front of the spar.
5/16/04 5 hours
Some of this 5 hours was spent douing electrical, so you can look there to see what's been going on... Nothing smoking yet!
Anyways, fuselage stuff... I didn't do too much. I looked at the front spar covers, but they didn't look like they needed to much attention. Just a debur and nutplate, and they're done! I'll save them for later!
Instead, I set up the aileron trim springs, and put in the control stick bases properly. Here's an overall shot...
Instead of the hokey safety wire techinique, I borrowed an idea from Mike, and used some tie rod arms from a radio controlled car. The clevises are metal too, so they should last OK. They also allow for some minor tweaking to get the trim tuned nicely. Here's a close up...
7/18/04
Here are the shots as promised of the centre console that I'm trying to develop. I'm hoping to put the throttle just aft of the fuel selector, and then also have my Blue Mountain Remote Panel in there too, mainly for the passenger if they're a practised pilot of course. I may put an arm rest in there too, with some storage. You need all the storage you can get in one of these things. The front will probably have a small panel that extends up to the main panel, and contain the pull cables for cabin heat and parking brake. It may also contain the trim indicators.
The throttle quadrant I've ordered will come from DJM Manufacturing. They look really nice, and I can get it engraved to suit our application. We only need two cables, prop and throttle, since we'll be running FADEC. The two cables will pass by the fuel selector no problem, since it has an extension to the turn knob from the actual valve body. The throttle quadrant is about 4.25 inches deep, so it'll fit perfectly above the spar.
8/15/04 9 Hours
Today was a fuselage day. Last night, I stopped by the hangar to measure up for a new center console design. Then, when I got home, I hit the CAD tube, and redesigned the console. Well, it looks like it came out OK.... Here;s the design.... Light grey circle is fuel selector, then throttle, then BMA remote keypad.
When I got to the hangar today, I made another mock up out of illustration board and foam board. Then I put it in the plane and set up the seats to see how comfy it'd be...
The plan is to have the lower front portion of the console connect in to the Van's high pressure fuel pump covers, so it's opened up to five inches. the console itself is four inches, which does push the seats out a half inch. I need to double check that this will be OK with my sliding canopy though.
So, next on my list was the fuel pump. Now this was a contraption! I've seen it on other web sites, and it looked like a bunch of tangled pipework. Well, it's truly that! I struggled for a while, since my stupid pipe bender was only good for 90 degree bends. I went round to Mike and asked him how to do it. He got his bender out, and it did full 180's! Perfect. No more struggling. Once all that was out of the way, it wasn't too bad. Took a bit of time though to figure out lengths and such.
Here are some gratuitous shots of it in the plane. Upon fitting this lot together, it seems like my fuel selector is 45 degrees out of whack. The instructions say that the holes in the selector plate and the valve should align, but if I match the detents in the valve with the positions of the switch, it ain't right. Not sure what to do about this yet. Maybe a note to Andy at Andair. The circuit breaker there just happened to be lying onthe floor!
I also fabricated the fuel valve support. Made from the original Van's parts, although I lowered it some, and cut away most of the original surrounding part. This whole area will be closed up by centre conole.
So, in the shot below, the fuel valve is in the off position, and the switch is at the off detent. As you can see, it's exactly 45 degrees off.
8/17/04 Update
By popular demand from the RV-List, I took some better photos of the Matco parking brake valve, and the external stop I made as part of the doubler to the firewall. The angle stock is 1"x1", on an 0.63 doubler. It's all held to the firewall with 6 rivets, and the two bolts that go through to hold the valve. The valve required spacing away from the doubler due to the arm going beyond the valve mounting face.
10/10/04 8 hours
Cameron came by today to prime some parts, so I quickly prepped the fuselage skin behind the canopy and it's stiffeners so I could shoot them at the same time. What a disaster it turned out to be... Not the finish, but the palava we had trying to actually get to paint it. We mixed up the paint, and I hung the gun up in the paint booth. I went in to paint, and for some reason, the hose wouldn't connect to the gun. Strange, I just had the pnuematic cleco pliers attached! So, Cam went to get his hose. He came back, connected it all up, and I hung up the gun again coz I decided I needed to cover my shoes, since they were nice ones and I didn't want overspry on 'em. Here's a pic... Anyone seen the film 'Snatch'?!!
Then, I heard a thud. The gun had dropped to the floor. Doh! Paint everywhere. Nice. Well, there was still enough in the gun to shoot my parts, but Cam had to mix up what was left of our primer for his. Then, to top it off, while he was spraying in the booth, he trod in the paint spill! Double doh! Unfortunatley, I forgot to take pics of theprimed items, but there isn't much to see until topcoat is on anyways. We may do that tomorrow if the weather is nice.
Cameron was by today, so I took advantage of him by getting him to drive all the rivets for the turtledeck skin. This took us quite a while, with me inside bucking, and Cam driving the gun. Turned out pretty good. Fortunately, the other day, Cameron came by to paint, and I couldn't make it coz of work. Well, he painted the inside of this skin for me, and the stiffeners, so that was a godsend. Otherwise, we wouldn't have got this done today. Thanks again Cam! This pretty much concludes the back end of the plane. Next stuff to do here is the canopy track, but that'll be covered in the finish kit. There's still plenty of other fuselage stuff to come, I'm sure.
Here's a shot from the front showing the stiffeners. I also mounted the magnetometer for the EFIS 1 for the final time while I was in there. See all the cushioning I used. It was actually quite comfortable, apart from aching arms reaching up with the bucking bar!
