Wrap Up Work 3
10/7/2006 10 hours
I went to the UPS depot and picked up the EFIS CPU yesterday. It's time to get cracking with everything under the front skin. It can't wait any longer!
I mounted the EFIS for the final time, and leveled it relative to the airframe. I also went through and tie wrapped all the wiring securely. I wheeled the plane outside and checked the function of it, and also called ground on the radio for a radio check. "Loud and clear" was the response. Perfect. That was the first ever 'official' transmission for 4ST. I've transmitted on an unused frequency before to see if the handheld picks up the transmission. It did, so I expected the response from ground control to be positive.
Once the EFIS CPU was back in the plane, I reconnected the park brake control cable and checked it's operation.
My next task was to figure out the defroster vent. I got a pair of these from Aircraft Spruce. I'm only using one of them though. They were a bit pricey too, considering how they're made. Still it will be nice to shut the defrost off when it's not needed. This is about the area it will be coming out through the glareshield. It was a bit difficult getting the SCAT tubing on this thing. Fortunately, I remembered the hose clamp this time!
I did a bunch more prep on the skin. I deburred the edges, made the holes for the defroster and rubbed the whole thing down with a scotchbright pad. Here it is after priming it.
While that was drying, I set about finishing up all the wiring stuff. I've always been a bit skeptical about the connector used on the AOA Pro display. For one, it points down, so there's a slight chance that vibration and gravity could help this to become disconnected one day. I didn't want to take that chance, so I tie wrapped it. It isn't going anywhere now! I also went mad with tie wraps all over the plane securing everything.
The other night when I was checking bucking bar access, I realised I'd mounted the voltage regulators to close the flange. Today I moved them down some so access would be a bit easier. I probably wasn't thinking about this at all when I mounted them.
I also reconnected the secondary battery and secured all the wiring in this area. I broke out the rivet gun too and finally riveted the angle that supports the glovebox to the sub panel! This picture was taken before I got all that done though.
When I wired the avionics stack, I wasn't sure how many grounds I'd need to daisy chain into the connector, so I left a tail on one of these butt splices just in case. Today I fiured that I was done with any stack wiring so I cut it short and put some heat shrink on there.
Ahhhh.. It's finally dry... That means I can paint some flat black. This is actually the underside, and I'm expecting most of this to be covered up with the glareshield upholstery. I painted it flat black so that if we have a tiny gap in the fabric around the edges it won't show through green!
For some reason, I had this bright idea to back rivet these pieces to the top skin. In hindsight, it might not have been the best thing to do as now the skin isn't so flexible. The trouble is, riveting these on above the radio stack would be tricky at best. Still, I may end up drilling these out and doing them in situ. We'll see what Mike thinks tomorrow.
Before the skin goes on, I need to make provision for the compass lighting wiring and also get it mounted to the roll over brace. Here I've assembled the mount to the compass. I figured out the location along the brace, so now I just need to drill it so it hangs correctly. Easier said than done! I think it's time to call it a day, it's late and I have to be up early to get some more stuff done before Mike & Clayton come over. It's going to be a big day.
10/8/2006 11 hours
Well, today was they day we started to rivet the forward skin on. There were a few things that needed to be done though before Mike arrived. Clayton came by to help out with some of it. There seems to be so much to do!
There's a whole slew of pictures that Clayton took of todays events, and when they arrive in my email, I'll post them and write up more comments.
We attached the compass to the roll bar brace and threaded the wiring through. The way we got it to be centered on the brace was to wrap tape around it until we had a really snug fit. Then we match drilled it and Clayton tapped out the holes to #8-32. I'm a bit disappointed that the foam rubber that is sandwiched between the compass mount and the brace was stuck on wonky at the manufacturer, so the compass hangs a bit to the right. I need to find a way to fix this.
Mike showed up around 4pm, and we spent the next three hours riveting. It was quite painful squeezing in under the front of the fuselage. There's not a lot of room with that centre console in there! It's a good job I'm skinny!
Some of the rivets we decided it would be more 'efficient' to use pulled rivets. All the ones hiding under the glareshield trim for example, will never be seen. Here I was caught in the act of sin with the rivet puller in hand. I tried to run away quickly, but Clayton has a fast camera!
Putting the brace on is fun let me tell you.
And getting the bolts and nuts on is even more fun! Maybe I shouldn't have back riveted those little angle pieces on that connect to the panel in the middle. It would have been a lot easier here as the skin would have been more flexible.
Here's a shot of Mike's plane. Sitting in the sunshine. Nice.
My toy on the left and Clayton's on the right. We should have got them all together!
Here we are doing the bucked rivets. This is even more fun than getting the nuts and bolts in the brace! It was good today, as Clayton took a ton of pictures of us doing some work!
That's a lot of grimmacing there! Mike look's like he's chewing tobacco!
Getting close.
We prosealed the front of the skin to seal the firewall. Here, I'm cleaning of the stuff that squeezed out during the riveting process.
We managed to get a good 90% of it done today. Mike had to leave before sunset as his home strip has some pretty high trees at one end, and they're impossible to see in the dark. Thanks for your help Mike! I hope you didn't get in too much trouble with Jill.
10/9/2006 2 hours
Mike and I arranged to go to the hangar again this evening to finish up the skin riveting. There sure are some hard to get at rivets. You need to get quite creative with the bucking bars.
Here's a shot of it all done! Thanks again Mike! I owe you!
Next step is to call Piero to come by and upholster the glareshield. This is going to look so cool.
10/11/2006 2 hours
I managed to get out a little early yesterday and today and stopped by the hangar. Yesterday, I didn't really do plane work, I spent most of my time cleaning up and getting the place in some sort of order. It's starting to look a little better now. At the weekend, I'll take a broom and sweep the place out even.
This evening, I riveted the camlocks onto the upper strips around the top of the firewall. Now I can move on and get the cowl fitted finally. It does fit already, but I only had it assembled with clecos previously.
I also climbed inside again, and got under the panel to mount the interior footwell lights and secure the fuel vent lines with Adel clamps. It wasn't really too bad under there! While I was doing lighting stuff, I finished up wiring the map lights. Here is a 'night' shot in the dark hangar. The footwells illuminate nicely, along with the baggage compartment. I did this to make it more 'car like'. On the panel, there's an interior light switch which is connected to the battery bus, so they can be switched on at any time, and left on to flatten the battery. I wonder how many times that will happen!
The red glow you can see on the panel is the light from the LED map lights. The light form these is enough to illuminate the panel too when you're flying. Sweet. The only things I have to do under ther now is fit the ducting for the air vents and mount the fire extinguisher to the front of the centre console.
I got all my stuff done early today at work, so I managed to leave at 1:30pm. Of course the motive was to get to the hangar and do aeroplane stuff. Much more fun than designing car stuff.
I wanted to get the wings completely finished and flight ready. Excluding the access hole covers of course. I'll need to put them in place (kind of) for the weight and balance, but for now they can stay off.
The first task was to rig the ailerons so that they were aligned with the wing tips. This was pretty easy, as I'd got it close previously. I only had to drop the right aileron 1/8". Next I worked on the flaps. This took a little longer because I had to align them with the ailerons (easy bit), then I worked on the wing skins a little to make them touch all the way along the flap in the full down and full up positions. This took A LONG TIME. I don't know why, I was being careful, as the last thing I wanted was to damage a wingskin on our lovely aeroplane. It would be a nightmare to have to replace that.
Here is the flap fully down. Once she's painted, there will be some anti scuff tape along this section to preserve the paint.
Here it is in the full up position. The skin touches all the way along. It's looking good! The left side was easier then the right side for some reason. Maybe it's because I did the right side first, and it's always harder the first time.
Here's a shot looking down the trailing edge. Nice and straight and all aligned.
I put in the two spar bolts that go in the spar web. I should've done this long ago, but for some reason never got around to it. It was on my list of things to get the wings flight ready, so it's now done. I also tie wraped the aileron pushrod boots to the pushrods. To ensure a good seal I double tie wrapped them. I tidied up some of the wiring and tubing runs here too.
So, after all that the wings are now flight ready! Things are really starting to look finished now too! This is too cool! Can you feel the excitement?
10/14/2006 5 hours
I wangled my way to getting to the hangar again today, although I'm pretty busy doing home stuff too at the moment. We got a bunch of chores done this morning, so this evening I got to work on the plane a bit. Today's task was to get the interior flight ready! I didn't need to do too much.
I put the SCAT tube on the fresh air vents, and labeled the alternative air knob. The ducting slid easily over both the intake duct and the cabin vent. That's a first!
Here's the right side. You can also see the location of the interior light in the passenger footwell.
I fitted the ELT remote. I forgot to test it though! I did think about it, but it wasn't the first five minutes of the hour, then I promptly forgot about it. In order to fit this, I had to first epoxy in the nuts behind here as they were impossible to get to. I used 'instant' epoxy, which really wasn't that instant. Still it worked out well, because by the time I'd done all the other things today, I could get the screws into the nuts. They were nyloc nuts too. The extra hole in the panel was because I used the original Van's panel as a pattern for drilling and cutting this custom one. The Van's one has a hole here, but I have a different vent set up so the hole is unused. I think I'll have to fill it with a screw to nowhere.
I sealed up the hole in the firewall for the alternative air.
Well, that's it. The interior is now 'flight ready', apart from the glareshield trim. I'm hoping that Piero can come by tomorrow to get it started. Right now, it's the big hold up because I can't get the windshield on until the trim is in place. In the meantime, it's time to move firewall forward again.
I didn't snap a picture, but I spent some more time putting high temp spiral wrap on some of the FADEC harness at the back of the engine. This was a bit tricky as it's tough to get my hands in there now. I think the spiral wrap will go a long way towards protecting the wiring from any chaffing back there.
Once I'd done messing with that, I figured it was time to get the cowling finished up. In order to have this thing flight ready, it needs the screws in the front of the inlets fitting, and all the camlocs along the top putting in. I still need to do the oil door too, so I should probably get that out of the way tomorrow. Tonight though, I chose to fit the cowling to see how it worked with the baffle seals, and also to see the fit against the newly riveted top skin. Well, it's looking pretty good! The baffle seals do push the cowling up a bit, so I left the plane like this (with some weight on the cowling) for the night. Eventually, the baffle seals will bend over and conform to where they should go.
Look at this! It's almost done! Tomorrow, I'm going to finish the cowling and then start on other fibreglass parts. If Piero comes, I'll help him with the upholstery, so I'm not sure how much I'll get done. I'm going to be calling for our inspection soon!
