Saturday 1
No building - Oshkosh air show
Sunday 2
No building - Oshkosh air show
Monday 3 ~ Friday 7
No building too much work to do. Called Europa and got the specs for the hinge wire and TU2 tube so that I can order this from Aircraft Spruce
Saturday 8
Attached the hinges to rudder using epoxy flox paste and pop rivets as described in the manual. I put each hinge halve in place with one cleco. I then offered up the other halves of the hinges, which were, still G clamped to my aluminum straight edge. With my wife as a trusty assistant I then slid in the hinge wires. The hinge halves on the straight edge had never been removed from the straight edge during the mark-out / drilling phase so I was confident that the alignment was still correct. I had to take a lot of care to ensure that the pop rivets had pushed completely through as the drill hole diameter made for a tight fit. I don't think I did my counter sinks enough but I would rather add a tiny amount of filler along this edge than have a weak hinge attachment due to counter sinks being too deep.
Sunday 9
Nice day so I went flying. I did manage to cut the bottom of the rudder off ready for fitting in the rudder horn for the tail wheel.
Monday 10
I hollowed out the foam core using the Dremmel with a Permagrit cutting cone. The manual suggested that I drill it out to an even 12mm. Europa suggested to increase this to 18mm. I got the bottom smooth by making up a small block 18mm thick and attaching some adhesive grit paper to it. I then nailed on a piece of wood 25mm by 100mm long, which acted as a depth gauge. This worked out to be very quick and effective.
I then did the lay up of 4 pieces of bid, this seemed to go pretty quickly. Kept sample number 5. Environment was 21 @ 60 %
Tuesday 11
I inspected the lay up which had no bubbles for a change. I hack sawed off the excess and sanded flat ready for the next stage. The nut plate really didn't match the shape so I had to do quite a bit of re shaping. Because the shape of the plate really didn't look like the cut out I sent a fax to Europa. I got a faxed drawing back within an hour, which detailed how the rudder horn was aligned to the base. This solved all the uncertainty.
Wednesday 12
Cut out some bid for the final lay up and scuffed the nut plate in preparation for floxing into place. I didn't do the lay ups because the environment was 21 @ 63%, getting close to marginal. I will preheat the workshop tomorrow.
Thursday 13
Humidity is still too high. Over the last month the workshops temperature has remained at 21, but the humidity has been slowly creeping up.
Friday 14
No building, visitor from Australia.
Saturday 15
Still had my visitor, so we went flying. I flew along the coast of lake Michigan past Chicago. This area is a pretty busy section of airspace, several different control towers and height restrictions. It was an interesting experience to fly past the Sear's tower and all the other tall buildings.
Sunday 16
I did manage to flox in the rudder plate and lay in four pieces of bid. I raised the temperature of the immediate working area to 28, which lowered the humidity down to 40%. The lay up was quite straightforward. The trick seems to be to lay the bottom on first and work the sides down into the corners. Saved sample #6
Monday 17
Cut back the excess with a hand held hacksaw blade and filed down the edges level using my T bar tool with adhesive grit.
Tuesday 18
I drilled the three holes open and lightly counter sunk the burs off. A small amount of resin seems to have got in, despite my sealing it up with masking tape.
Wednesday 19
I purchased a 10-32 tap and cleaned up the holes. The rudder is nearly done !!
Saturday 22
I collected up all of the hardware to go with the rudder and taped it to it in a plastic zipper bag. It' was then time for a workshop clean up. All tools were collected up, workbench scrapped down and the workshop vacuumed up.
I got the foam core out for the port stabilizer and took a look at the manual. I guess it must be the engineer in me, I hate reading manuals and this one is no exception. The first thing was to put the dabs of epoxy on the slits. I then removed the lightening cores, and found that due to the taper they only come out one way. I discovered this by breaking one off inside the core. I spent the next 2 hours trying to get it out with no luck.
Sunday 23
It was an overcast day but I decided I should practice some landings. The wind was straight down the runway so I though some cross wind landings was in order. With the wind gusting at 15 to 18 knots it was good practice but I could always use more !!
In the afternoon I started to do battle with the stuck core. I finally gave up,
put the core on the jig block, secured it and cut it open. I removed the piece
and glued it up, I think this took all of 15 minutes. I put breather holes
between all of the cores, and marked out the tip radius.
I made up a template for the tip radius as an afterthought, it really was the easiest way to get both sides marked out the same, and it can be used for the other stabilizer. I used a coping saw to cut the radius and then sanded it with a Permagrit sanding spline. Next job was to cut out some 50 mm pieces of lightening core to plug up the holes and glue them in place.
Monday 24
Sanded the radius on the topside. I use a half sheet sanding block with a soft rubber backing. This is the same type of sanding block used for smoothing plaster wall joints and it does a nice job of shaping blue foam
Tuesday 25
It was the local EAA Chapter 18 meeting tonight. Most of the evening was taken up with people swapping tales (lies) about their experiences from the Oshkosh Fly in. I took along my epoxy scales that I had built from the design described in the Sport Flyer magazine earlier this year. There was a lot of interest in this, as it removes the traditional sources of errors associated with balance type scales.
Wednesday 26
Turned over the stabilizer and did the bottom radius. This took a little longer because the glue from the plugs was harder than the foam. When I do the port stabilizer I will make sure that the glue for the lightening hole plugs is well towards the back.
Saturday 29
It was a nice day so I went flying. I got a little instruction on straight in VOR approaches.
I did do a little on the stabilizer. I put the outer foam core away and put the inner core into the mold. I marked out the 25-mm rebate and sanded the topside. I used a Permagrit sanding spline for this, its thickness is equal to the exact depth of the rebate so this made the job easy.
Sunday 30
It was another nice day so I went flying again !!. Our local chapter 18 had its end of year cook out at one of the local airports. I did feel a bit guilty on not doing much on my tail planes so I finished the rebate on the underside of the inner core. The underside took a little longer. This side has the slots in it that had dabs of glue on them. I had the same issue of glue being right where I wanted to sand. I will be much more careful when I do the port side. I cut pieces of the lightening cores and glued them into place. The nice part about 5 minute epoxy is that you can go and have a cup of coffee, come back and sand it off and the job is done. I did have to re-do some of the breather holes because the 50 mm plugs would have covered them.
I disassembled the TPA01 tube. The tolerances on this piece are very tight. I will need to take care with all of the pieces, I suspect even dropping the bush will cause it not to fit.