Wings 2
1/12/2006 6 Hours
Here's the Gretz pitot tube mount. It's tied into the rib by a small piece of angle. Making the matching hole for this in the skin was fun with a file.
Here's Dave doing the thankless task of deburring. Lot's of holes to do Dave!
Our next task was to put a conduit run in each wing. This was quite tricky, as the skins are already on the inboard part of a QB wing. We adapted a 3/4" Rotabroach cutter by putting a bolt inthe end instead of the grub screw, and using a bunch of socket set extensions to get the length we needed to reach through the multitude of ribs. We just added more and more extensions, like boring a hole into the earth.
Rotabroach cutters are THE single best way to cut holes in sheet metal. They leave a really clean hole, and they go through quick!
Here's the driving end.
This is somewhere along the length, close to the cutter end. The tape is there to prevent the whole thing coming to pieces as we pull it out. Didn't want to lose any bits of extension in the wings and have to go fishing for them later.
Here's how long it ended up! It's probably about 3 1/2 feet.
And the holes it left behind. We put a #30 pilot hole in each rib to guide the Rotabroach properly. Putting the pilot holes in was also a lot of fun with drills.
Yet another shot of the holes we bored in the wing ribs.
While Dave was deburring skins, I set about the pitot plumbing. I bought these fittings a while ago now, in preparatin for this moment. Out pitot is heated, so we need to have a length of aluminium tubing to soak up some heat before going to plastic. Here, I got an AN fiting to 1/8" pipe, and a plastic 1/8" pipe to fit 1/4" OD tubing. Looks like it'll work a treat.
Here's the rest of the tube. Looks like it's been mauled by a bear doesn't it?! Well, the trouble is, you need to leave enough length to be able to connect the whole thing up through the pitot tube mount. Once it's all connected, I'll go through and sort it out so it's neater and better restrained. Until we get the skin on and the pitot connected, there's no real point in making this all look pretty.
1/16/2006 6 Hours
In the right wing, we needed to mount the autopilot servo. Here's the start of the basic design. The end plates are 0.063", and the angles are 3/4"x3/4"x0.063". There's an angle piece at the far end too, but it's not on in this pic.
This is the plate that it will mount to. The plate will be riveted to the wing rib, then the angles will screw to the plate.
Here's the pushrod. We were experimenting a bit with the pushrod hole positions, and settled for the one closer to the pivot. It took some working out to get the swings right, as you don't want the servo to over centre.
Here's the servo's first mounting in the wing. Now, access is going to be fun when the skin is on. Ultimately, the mounting plate will have a cutout in it around the first rib lightening hole. The whole contraption can the be unscrewed from the access bay and slid through the lightening hole and out of the access hole. I know it'll fit, coz I've already tried it with the skin off!
Here we are all riveted and screwed into place. This is pretty rigid, and will be even more so when the lower skin is on. It ain't going anywhere in a hurry!
Here you can see the safety tab which is there to prevent the arm coming off if something comes loose. You have to be really careful here with the tab, because you need room for the arm to swing through the appropriate range of motion.
Another shot of the arm end.
We threaded the conduit through the holes we made previously. This was fun. The conduit is actually 3/4" OD irrigation tubing. Its smooth, a little flexible and light. Perfect for this application. Available from the aviation isle at Home Depot (Orange Hell). In this pic, the wings are almost finished.
Stuff left to do... Countersink the rivet holes on the main spar, and put the skins on. Here, the skin is just clecoed and hanging in place. You didn't think we were done did you?!
I got Dave to make soem rings for the aileron pushrod boots. While he was busy doing that, I countersunk the spar.
And put the wiring in for the aileron servo. I had to cut the cable to do all this. The joints will be made inside the fuselage. There are 12 wires inside the sheathing. I labelled them all before cutting them!
1/18/2006 Should've been 6 hours. Turned out to be 3.
This is Dave's last day here. He has to leave for the airport at about 4pm to catch his flight back to Australia.
So, now that the wings are all done inside, it's time to get the skinny on the skins. This is how far we got when......
This happened. In this pic, it's all cleaned up and glued after the trip to the ER. I'm hoping it won't scar, but the doc said that it'll probably leave a line. We had the wing skin peeled back over the wing dolly, and taped in place. As we were working our way down the rivets, the tape let go and the wing skin came flying back down and clobbered me in the head. It didn't hurt really, but I knew it hit me. I asked Dave if it looked bad, and he said, "You'll find out in a minute coz all the blood is about to run into your eye!" Lucky really that it wasn't my eye.
Well, we set ourselves some goals. First was an engine start which we quickly realised wasn't going to happen. Next was getting the wings on. We thought we might manage that, but it turned out to not be the case. If I hadn't needed to go to the ER, we probably would've got at least one wing completely finished, and made some prgress toward getting the other wing skinned. Oh well. Overall, considering the time we actually put in each day (not as much as we should have), we did accomplish a fair bit.
Thanks for taking the time out and coming over to help out a bit Dave, it was much appreciated. Hope your trip back was OK, and that you didn't have to put up with the screaming kids!
As well as fuselage stuff, I tackled the rest of the wing skin on the wing we started on my own. I have to say, when Dave was here, we got the hard bit done. The rest really wasn't too bad on my own. My arm is a bit sore from passing it through the rib holes, but no pain no gain! At least I didn't slice myself open today!
Here's the skin all riveted! It feels great to get one finshed!
Here's my arm. The redness is going away now. It's been about 3 hours sonce I got back from the hangar and I've had a shower. Your arm will likely look like this too when you've done your wings! I should start a new page for injuries!
