January 29, 2006

Considering the time spent at the hangar today, it didn’t feel like I got much done. I worked on doing stuff that needed doing with the wings on. The first task was the flaps, and getting the flap pushrod holes cut. This meant putting the flaps on the wings, so while I was at it, I cut away two of the hinge eyelets so that the hinge pins could be inserted from the centre of each flap. It’s not very easy to get them out, but it’s possible! They certainly won’t be coming out of their own accord.

I had to trim the inboard edge of the flap upper skin to clear the fuselage. I still have to trim a little more off this to make a nice even gap.

Using the ‘string method’ to make the flap hole. The string is tied to the flap motor weldment, and in each position, you can lift the flap up to the right length (marked on the string) and file the hole accordingly. Beats putting in and taking out the pushrod every time! Thanks Mike for the tip! This got the hole pretty close. My arms were aching by this stage!

Here is the flap in the full down position. It’s nice to see something actually working.

Here it’s fully up. I measured the travels with my Smart Tool, and I get 11 degrees of travel with each stop of the flap position system. It started at 22 degrees and went down to 66 degrees, therefore travel is 44 degrees.

I had to tweak the flap pushrod hole a little more with the pushrod in place, but not too much. Here’s the final shape.

Repeat for the right side. Here the flap is fully down. I also put the aileron on.

I didn’t have enough tube to make the flap pushrods. I had to make a makeshift one to do this exercise. I don’t know why I don’t have enough tube, but I just couldn’t find any. I’ll order some up from Spruce tonight, then I can make them next weekend.

Some thing that I wanted to do, but couldn’t was the holes for the bottom fuselage skin to the wing. Trouble is, these quickbuild wings have rivets in all the holes along the inboard rib, and really I should’ve drilled out the ones where nutplates go so I could use a strap duplicator to match drill the fuselage. Maybe I can slide the wings out a bit and drill out the rivets. I’ll give it a try next weekend.

I also have a sticky aileorn on the left side. I diagnosed the issue and sourced it to a tight bellcrank. I’ll have to investigate this further. Maybe the bushing is too tight in the weldment.