December has been a pretty busy month. To some extent we are relieved a bit from all of the Christmas craziness because all of our family is back in Australia, but it was still a busy month. I was not real good about keeping my diary on a day-by-day basis, so I have departed a bit from the usual format.
Flying & stuff.
I did a lot of work on my instrument rating this month. I completed all of the study and passed the written exam, I also logged another 7 ~ 8 hours of training. My instructor was trying to get me ready to take the exam by the end of the year, but we couldn’t find an examiner who was free until January. I have worked hard at it and I am probably as ready as I ever will be.
I took one final trip up to Beaver Aviation to take Marty up to get his RV6. The engine rebuild was finished and it looked really nice. The day started badly for me; I walked into the aileron of the C150 and split my nose open, thus joining the ranks of the many Cessna owners who have done just that. I looked a real sight when I picked Marty up on the other side of the airport, blood everywhere. Marty did most of the flying, I did not feel like it.
I got one recreational flight in down to Schaumburg, Ill. Marty found a guy who had a second hand Narco 122 for sale. These are a pretty neat navigational aid. It is a VOR, localiser, glide-slope and marker beacon all built into a standard 3 1/4” instrument. It turned out to be a good instrument, it has only been used to 40 hours since new. The fellow selling it had built a half scale P47 and then promptly lost his medical. It was a bit sad to see that happen. We flew down to Schaumburg in Marty’s RV6, and I think I can really get used to cruising at 140 Knots. It’s the first time I had flown an RV6, it’s a pretty nice aircraft.
Starboard wing.
We managed to get this completed this month. I had to finish putting on the two-inch strips of bid around a few spots. I used the tried and tested method of doing the wetting out on cling wrap, and cutting them to length. I have never had much success with wetting out 2 pieces at once, I suspect if I had the resin a bit warmer it might have work out. I did read a neat idea in Steve Genottes web page on how to get two strips at once wetted out. Take a look at http://home.sprintmail.com/~gopack/Wingpage.htm
One tip I can offer is to peel ply the area around where you want to stick the mass balance cover, it saves having to scuff it up later and don’t get too carried away with flox in this area either. Too much flox makes it hard to get the mass balance cover on.
It’s a good idea to also put peel ply around any of the glass work by the inspection port so that you don’t spike your hands if you ever need to work in there at a latter date.
I approached cutting the wings for the mass balance weights a bit differently this time. I took the foam block for the mass balance weight and sat it on the aileron, which was mounted on the wing. I then used this to accurately determine where the slot should go. You can get the idea from the picture below.
Once I had cut the slots out I was all set to glue on the mass balance covers. I supported the wing with a bit of 50 x 50 mm aluminum angle as before, because the wing looses all of its strength once the slots are cut. Once I had the covers glued in with Redux I could start to make the foam profile for the mass balance weights and get them right. This turned out to take longer than it should, but I am sure glad that I had not put these things on when I manufactured the aileron.
I assembled the entire out rigger hardware, and masked up the flaps & aileron in preparation for sticking on the top skin. I found that the scuff sanding of the wing, ribs and skin went a bit faster this time. The most useful tool for this operation was a drum sander with 50 grit paper.
The gluing job went fast this time as well.
I remember that last time it took 3 of us about 3 hours to mix, spread
and glue the skin on. The most time
consuming job was the spreading of the glue because it took a long time getting
the glue in a bead. This time I got an
old empty sealant tube and cleaned it out.
I then mixed up a 
goodly
amount of Redux and put it in the sealant gun and we found that with this we
could lay out a nice bead of the stuff along the ribs and edges. It took Marty and I only 2 hours to get the
job done. You can see in my photo a
black tube that runs up to the wing tips.
I am still undecided on what to do about strobes and wing tip lighting
so I have put in the conduit for the wiring and left it for a while. What I really want to do is to cut the front
quarter out of the wing tip and put the lights in the wing tip. I am holding off to see if anyone
manufactures a clear lens for the job, if not I am going to have to make one
myself.
I then put on all of my lead shot bags, and any thing else I could find to weight the whole lot down to set. (if you look carefully you can even see my diving weight belts) A good tip here is to mark where each rib is on the out side of the skin so you can position the weights accurately.
The skin went well, I didn’t have to do too much to clean it up, I think I’ll have my flaps and ailerons clearances done in a couple of hours. The last task was to put some uni on the top and bottom skins at the root. I still have no idea why they are on the bottom, but, if that’s what the manual says……..
Tricks & tips
Cockpit module
It was a nice feeling to put the second wing away for a while. I can’t kid myself that they are done yet. I will have to fill and sand the flaps, ailerons and imperfections in the skin. I think fitting up wing tip strobes is going to take a while, particularly if I have to manufacture covers myself. I got the module out of its crate and dusted it all off. There are a number of tasks that need to be done on this thing.
Cutouts.
There are quite a few cut-outs to be done. I found that trying to find the scribe lines was a bit tricky, but once I had them spotted I could run over them with a pencil and high light them. I cut these out fairly quickly using my Dremmel and a straight Permagrit cutter. I do most of this type of cutting with someone holding my shop-vac to suck up the dust as I go.
Ply rib reinforcing
Marty came by and we cut all of these out fairly quickly, but putting them in is not as quick. Quite an amount of time is needed to scuff up the whole area, cut enough bid and lay them in. I think we destroyed the best part of a day getting this done. It is quite surprising how much strength is added to the whole thing with these bonded in. I put a complete layer of bid over the ply that faces the wheel, I can imagine that this area could have a fair amount of crap sprayed in it.
Brake assembly
I took a look at this and in the manual it says to put a new handle in it. The one I got was too thick, so I had to take an hour out to grind this to fit. Marking the module out for fitting this up can best be described as interesting? I got the darn thing in spot on, even the reservoir hole. I would have to say that this was more good luck than good management.
Control tubes.
There is a fair amount of work associated with manufacturing all of the bits and pieces here. I was quite pleased when Marty suggested that he should take some with him for “home work”. He appeared back at my place the next day with a whole bunch of riveted parts and we started to assemble them. It takes quite a bit of messing about to get the Tufnol blocks aligned so that they don’t bind up. Once all of these bits and pieces were in place I could really appreciate the simplicity of the design, its really quite elegant. We floxed them in place, taking care that flox wasn’t getting anywhere it shouldn’t, and making sure it hadn’t bound up.
If I were to do this over again I would consider drilling it and putting in a grease nipple. I would think that lubricating these will be a little tricky in the future.
I have quite a bit more work to do, but it’s not likely to get done until January.
Fuselage
While I was unpacking the cockpit
module I decided to bring in the bottom of the fuselage. The manual shows this sitting on a few
pallets and beer crates. I thought of
going down to the liquor store and buying enough beer to get 3 crates, but some
how I didn’t think I could get all of them consumed in a day or two. Instead my son and I took a day out to make
a nice jig. I think that this will be
time well spent.
.