Tuesday 1
No building, away in Europe for business until the weekend.
Wednesday 2
Thursday 3
Friday 4
Saturday 5
I got back from Paris last night and took a look at my email. I got a note back from Andy Draper suggesting a small bend in the hinge plate would be okay. I made up a jig so that no bending moment would be applied to the pin and gave it a try. I closed my eyes, applied some pressure and it was straight. Prior to bending the plate the hinge pin seemed an awful amount out of alignment, but the reality was that the required bend was tiny.
I reassembled everything so that I could accurately position the other hinge plate. I found that I really needed some tubing with a 5mm internal diameter. I made a quick trip to the hardware store and found what I needed for 65 cents. I drilled and scuffed the hinge plate as before and bonded it into place.
Sunday 6
I spent an hour or so putting on 3 layers of bid to reinforce the hinge alignment pin on the second trim tab. I then turned my attention to a bit of woodwork. I needed an incident alignment block, a couple of V groove blocks and a V grooved block for leveling.
I set up the torque tube in the blocks, but it wriggled a bit and I wasn't happy with them.
Monday 7
I went to the dentist tonight to have a crown fitted, and I didn't really feel like visiting the workshop. By the time I am finished I think I would have paid this guy enough for a good down payment on a Rotax 914!!
Tuesday 8
Wednesday 9
I set my saw bench up tonight and cut out some more V blocks. By using the saw bench I was able to cut two at the same time, thus ensuring that they would be identical. I then made some clamping blocks for the top. This allowed me to set up the torque tube with the pins level and lock it down. I then bolted this all to my bench.
Thursday 10
I spent the evening marking out the centerline of the bush, and determining the start and end of the bush. I set the stabilizers on the torque tube separately and got out my two-meter straight edge. I set this up along the centerline of the torque tube by placing it 19 mm from the edge of my tri square. I did this at the root of the stabilizer and the end of the tube. This gave me a nice reference to draw the line along the top of the stabilizer. I then made a gauge to find the start and end of the bush and marked it out as well.
Saturday 12
I have been putting off this part of the project for a while. It was time to align both stabilizers and bond in the ferules. It is the sort of thing that if you mess up you will spend a long time fixing up.
I found that the mounting blocks were a great investment of my time. I taped my level to the incident block and marked where I put it on top of the stabilizers to enable me to return to the same spot each time. I set both stabilizers up and put a block under them to help hold them steady. I slid the ferules on the pins forward and marked around them in pencil. I drilled them out and had to do a small amount of filing to get them to fit.
Just to make sure I reassembled both stabilizers and checked the alignment. Things were still looking okay so I mixed up a batch of flox and glued them in place. I put a very thin smear of petroleum jelly in the torque tube pins just in case some flox oozed onto them during the process.
I departed the workshop taking my pet alligator with me, as suggested in the manual. I am not sure if this reference is in relation to Tony Krzyzewski
Apparently his cat has been known to walk over wet lay ups in the dead of the night. I think if it had been my cat it would have used up all of its nine lives in one go!!
Sunday 13
Today was unseasonably nice. We had clear sunny skies with temperatures in the low 50's. I figured I had no choice but to go flying!!. Jenny and I flew up to Manitowoc, a small town on the edge of Lake Michigan. The area has a history of shipbuilding going back 150 years and the township has a wonderful maritime museum.
I did spend a couple of hours in the workshop to cut out the square hole for the pip pins on the port stabilizer. After a lot of thought I decided to make them the same way as described in the manual. Some people have been making nice cover plates, but I was swayed not to for two reasons. The first reason is that I suspect the Australian regulations would require factory approved drawings, the second is that it is nice just to be able to inspect the pins during pre flight without having to remove any covers. I cut the hole based on the marking out I did previously and found it to be exactly over the correct place on the torque tube bush.
I rechecked the alignment and to my relief it was perfect. I slid the stabilizers off the tube and was glad I had put the petroleum jelly on the torque tube pins. Some flox had oozed over and the petroleum jelly made getting them apart fairly painless.
Monday 14
Tuesday 15
Wednesday 16
I spent an hour sanding out a square sided hole in the blue foam for the port stabilizer and its about ready for lining out with bid before drilling out.
Thursday 17
Friday 18
Saturday 19
This afternoon I cut the square hole out on the other stabilizer. My marking out of the centerline of the torque tube proved to be correct so I proceeded to sand out the square sided hole. The process I followed was to first bore through the foam with an on eight drill where the pip pin should go. I then widened this out to half an inch with a Permagrit round file. I then cut out foam to form the square sided hole with a knife and finished off with sanding sticks. I used some mixing sticks with self-adhesive grit attached, I have found this a really quick method of fabricating specially shaped sanding tools.
Before I lined the holes out with bid I center punched the TP 6 sleeve and started the hole with a one eight drill. I then did a small lay up on the holes using the cling wrap method and called it a day. I must admit, I think it would have been less effort to fabricate up some covers out of plumbing fittings and flox it in place, however I have the Australian CASA regulations to consider!!
Sunday 20
Well today is the day I have been putting off. Its time to drill the stabilizer through the torque tube and out the other side. I first cleaned up the lay up from yesterday and cleaned out the resin from the bottom of the square sided hole. The Permagrit cone on the Dremmel proved to be perfect for the task. I cleaned away enough resin to find my center punch marks.
My next concern was being able to hold the drill perfectly aligned. To help this I purchased a small circular "bullet" spirit level and fixed it to the back of my drill with putty. To calibrate this I put a 10 mm rod in my vice and set it perpendicular using a conventional spirit level. I then clamped my drill chuck onto this and aligned the level on the back of the electric drill. This may sound like a bit of messing about, but it took less than on hour.
I had purchased a one eight and on quarter Stelite drill bit the previous day. These two drill bits cost me $5.00, but for drilling stainless steel they are just wonderful. Well for a couple of hours worrying about it, it was all over in 5 minutes. I removed the starboard side and found the hole to be perfectly aligned. The port side was off by about 1.5mm, not really a problem, but not perfect.
I had some visitors in the afternoon. Chris and Sue Becker came by to look at my kit and progress. The are considering purchasing a kit in the New Year and wanted to speak to a builder first hand. This is the first time I had pondered the question, would I recommend this kit? I guess after building for a while and still getting excellent technical support from the factory I feel that I can recommend the product. Chris and Sue are both aeronautical engineers, so It was nice to have my choice validated by a couple of professional's.
Monday 21
Tuesday 22
I have been looking around for a nice piece of plastic tube to glue into the bottom of the stabilizers. I found the internal part of some promotional pens given to me at the Oracle Software convention did the trick just nicely. I knew that there was a good reason for going to that seminar! The internal diameter was about 5/16ths of an inch. I bored the hole out to accept these tubes and called it a night.
Wednesday 23
I only had time for an hour or so in the workshop tonight so I glued the plastic tubes in place.
Thursday 24
I don't normally think about airplanes in my sleep, but I did last night. It occurred to me this morning that if the tube was not correctly centered over the 1/4 hole in the bush that the pip pins would not lock properly. I tried the pip pins and sure enough they didn't lock. I suppose now is the time to find out, rather than flying along, however it was somewhat annoying. I spent the next couple of hours boring out the plastic tubes and cleaning up with the Dremmel.
Well its getting close to flap time so I cleaned up the workshop and studied the manual. I dived into my box of blue foam to find the cores, but I couldn't find anywhere that specified that the cores I needed were FC 7's or FC 8's. I unwrapped both and determined I needed the FC 8 core set.
Friday 25
Ho Ho its Christmas, so I had to do the eat drink and be merry thing for a while. I found the flat piece of foam and laminated it with some bid to make up some material for the rib. I also took advantage of my clean bench top and cut the cloth I needed for the first lay up.
Saturday 26
I got the jig blocks out ready for gluing onto the bench but I found that at the join, one was 1 mm lower than the other. After much checking and re checking I determined that one jig block was 1 mm lower over its entire base, so I made up some spacers out of thin cardboard and packed it up until it was level. I then cut them back as specified in the manual.
I cut out the foam spacer for the core joint and shaped it. I deviated from the manual a bit here. I glued on one side first and then put in a couple of cocktail sticks as suggested.
I let this set for a while and then put both cores on their respective jib blocks and slid them together to allow the cocktail sticks to pierce the foam for latter alignment
Unfortunately one of the sticks was not exactly at right angles and this caused a problem when joining the two cores. I then mixed up another lot of flox and glued the cores together, and they aligned really nicely.
Sunday 27
I glued jig blocks down to the bench, but just as a precaution I checked my bench to see if it was still flat. I found that one end was out by 1/2 mm so I adjusted up the two end legs before gluing the jig blocks. While that glue was setting I rebated rib with the Dremmel and then glued the cores to jig block.
This afternoon is kind of a big deal in Wisconsin. The Green Bay Packers were playing the Chicago Bears so we were invited to some friends place to drink beer and watch the game. After that little interlude I decided that there was still enough hours left in the day to do the first lay up. This went really well, I think that we are getting practiced at it now. I saved two samples #28 & 29. I used my heating lamp to get the temperature up to 22c @ 45% rh. I am finding in the winter that the ambient temperature in the basement is about 18c, a couple of degrees cooler.
Monday 28 ~ 30
I seemed to have caught a nasty flu going around which has me out of action
Thursday 31
I am still not feeling great, but I spent a bit of time setting up the jig blocks for the other side. I found that the misalignment of the foam cores was even worse on this side and unfortunately it varied over the length of jig block. It took several hours to make up a set of spacers and get them level before I could glue them to the bench.