Friday 1
I tried to fit the aileron to the wing today. I had to cut an awful lot of skin overhang off the aileron channel to get the darn thing to fit. I called Andy Draper but he seemed unconcerned.. He faxed me a drawing that’s not in the manual, (but will be in the new one) and sure enough, a reasonable amount of skin comes off.
Saturday 2
I made up the foam arms for the mass balance weights today. Now the drawing in the book is not the greatest so I made a couple and hot glued them in place to see how they fitted. Well this turned into a long operation. I put the darn things in place and I could not get the aileron to swing properly through the required angles without hitting either the top or bottom skins. Well I made quite a few of these things until it was apparent that they were never going to fit. Well it doesn’t tell you in the manual, but the obvious thing is that you have to cut the bottom of the skin!!
Now that I was released from my ignorance I made some new foam arms and put them on the ailerons. I trimmed the lead blocks to give better clearance from the top of the aileron box and put a fiberglass tape around them. I left the sides open so that I could drill them for balancing latter on.
I fitted up the bell cranks for the final time to the wing using the lock nuts on all of the parts.
Sunday 3
I flew up to Madison with some friends for breakfast and true to form, Air Traffic Control yelled me at. A runway incursion this time. It was my fault (as usual) but their instructions were definitely vague.
I finished fitting the ailerons up today. This was pretty well an all day effort by the time the holes were drilled and the skin was cut back in many small increments. I cut the aileron channel so that the wing mass balance arms could swing though the bottom. Now this is a pretty scary operation, it’s hard to get excited about taking a saw to your nicely finished wings. The wings immediately lost all strength in this area, actually they flop around terribly.
Monday 4
I cut the nose section out of the ailerons and fitted the short push rod tubes. They adjusted up quite nicely with the correct amount of deflection. One of my friends from the EAA has lent me a digital level. This is a really nice bit of gear, and now that I have used it I would not consider rigging up an airplane without it.
Tuesday 5
Wednesday 6
I did a rough balancing of the aileron weights tonight. I had left the sides of the weights with no glass on them to make this operation easier. I used a 10 mm drill and a variable speed drill. By turning the drill really slowly it was possible to get a nice clean cut without binding. This was a very slow operation. I ended up drilling three holes in each. This left the weights still too heavy, but I assume that after adding filler and paint I will need to re-do this operation.
Friday 8
Saturday 9
I finished off getting all the aileron clearances set up today. This is just one of those on and off type of operations. Putting the hinge on the wing is definitely one of those three-handed type of jobs. My main concern with the whole job was that the channel that the hinges go in, now flopped around where ever they wanted since they had been cut. I got a piece of aluminum angle and drilled holes in it to match the hinges. I then bolted it along the TE of the wing to give the channel some support. This was just okay, I found that the weight of the wing could still deflect the channel, leaving the LE of the aileron bottom sitting out below the bottom of the wing skin. It was only by about 2 mm, but it was not right. After poking and prodding at the thing I decided that the aluminum was not thick enough so I bought some angle that was 50 by 50 by 2.4mm and put it on. That seemed to straighten things out nicely.
Sunday 10
I took an instrument flying lesson today. I went out to dinner with my wife and had a glass or two of fine wine so I wasn’t really the sharpest today. This was a real lesson for me, I found the combination of turbulence and not feeling great made doing instrument approaches much more difficult than they should have been.
Monday 11
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Tuesday 12
Wednesday 13
I got the flap out tonight and rounded up all of the hardware I needed. I then pondered over the flap retraction mechanical drawing and decided it was all too difficult. I scrounged around for some 20mm thick material to make a flap template and came up with some chipboard. It didn’t take too long to make a fairly decent job of the template.
Thursday 14
I didn’t get any building done, but I did two hours of instrument flying. A couple of hours under the hood is about all I can manage, although some of it turned into night flying as well. I managed a half decent ILS, a good VOR alpha, and a reasonable localizer approach. I am still hopeful that I can get this rating done by the end of the year.
Friday 15
Well it is time to figure out the flap alignment. I glued the alignment jig onto my wing with a hot glue gun. I find the glue gun a darn handy thing. I have only recently purchased it and I am wondering if it would have been useful for jigging my blue foam blocks to the bench.
I got out a bunch of small G clamps and set up the arms onto the W18 plates and set up the flap into the jig. I couldn’t really get the thing to set up properly. I fooled around with the spacing between the LE of the flap and the wing to no avail. I adjusted up the supporting arms, but nothing seemed to bring it into alignment. Finally I took a few pictures and sent them over to Andy at Europa.
Saturday 16
Well the instrument company sent us a Sigma Tek DG instead of our old Precision Instruments. They seemed to think that the Precision Instruments device would always be troublesome. It was nice to retrieve my Sigma Tek and put it back into storage.
Sunday 17
I went flying in the morning and discovered the DG still did not work. I seem to be cursed. It is an absolute mongrel of a job changing this thing over. I got my Europa DG and put it back in. Well that kind off finished off my weekend; needless to say I didn’t get any building done.
Tuesday 19
I still had not heard back from Andy so I telephoned him. Poor old Andy seemed busier than a one-armed paper hanger. He got my pictures out and we decided that the flap was not sitting deep enough into the jig. This is because I had not made any allowance for the top skin of the wing.
I pulled the jig off and stuck a coin on it which was about the thickness of the wing skin, and sure enough the flap, along with the arms aligned up much better.
Wednesday 20
Marty came over and we drilled some 1/8 holes in the W18 plates and fitted up the flaps with Clecos. I used a 4mm. spacing between the flap and the TE of the wing. This seems to line up the flap and ailerons nicely. We cut away a bit of the excess on the TE of the wing in the flap area just to give it some relief around the corner near the aileron.
Thursday 21
I put in another 2 hours of instrument training tonight. I seem to have had a good run this month with getting in a lesson twice a week.
Friday 22
I drilled and bolted up the flaps tonight, I guess that makes its location pretty well permanent. Getting the holes drilled in the W18 plates is quite tricky. Fortunately my partner in the C150 has a nice flexible drill that allowed me to be able to get down close to the skin. I bolted it up, but I didn’t use any lock nuts. I will probably have this stuff on and off a few times before my Europa eventually flies.
Saturday 23
Since I had drilled out the side of my lead weights as far as I wanted to go I decided it was time to put some uni on the side of the weights. While that sticky lot was setting I made up the out rigger mechanism which is an “interesting” thing to assemble to say the least. It’s a pretty neat mechanism actually, I suspect that the designer spent quite a bit of time tinkering around with that before he got it right. The drawing is for the port side, viewed from the bottom. I gave up trying to mentally reverse, so I just read it upside down.
I got out my Redux and glued on the aileron weight covers as my last job for the day. This Redux seems mighty tough stuff. Now that I have seen it, it is obviously the same stuff that all of the ribs in the wing have been glued with.
Sunday 24
It was a nice day, so I did some instrument flight training. We have had a run of really nice weather for this time of year. I suppose it’s a bit dumb picking a nice day to go instrument training, I know I don’t get to look outside, that’s for sure.
Monday 25
Tuesday 26
We had our EAA chapter annual dinner meeting tonight. There was a big turn out, over 100 people. The chapter has a lot of builders, and quite a few RV’s among them. The guy at my table has nearly finished his Rutan designed Defiant. It’s a push / pull engine configuration, I didn’t actually know such an animal existed. We don’t have many composite builders, the only one I know of is a guy building a Cozy.
Wednesday 27
Thursday 28
Friday 29
Saturday 30
I flew our C150 up to Dodge County airport this morning to help my friend Marty take the engine off his RV6 for a major overhaul. It was a pretty interesting morning. We had the engine off and pulled down in about four hours. The aircraft mechanic is the same guy who does our C150 and he is real good about letting people work beside him
I started scuff sanding my wing skin in the afternoon. To do the job well takes quite some time.
Sunday 31
Sunday was quite a busy day. Marty came by and helped me with the scuff sanding of the skin and the wing ribs. This took about three hours to get finished. I had another guy come by from our EAA chapter who is building a Sonex, to take a look at my Europa. I think he got a better look than he had counted on, because I handed him some 50 grit and started him sanding as well.
I finished at about 4.00pm and took my usual instrument flying lesson. I flew a whole bunch of barely passable ILS approaches and wandered home at about 6.30.pm. wondering if I am ever going to get this IFR stuff mastered.
I went down to the workshop and got to thinking that I was really all set to glue the skin on and I had no real excuse not to. I rounded up my wife and son and started mixing batches of Redux. The whole job seemed relatively straightforward. It seems to take quite a bit of Redux to get a thick enough coat on the ribs and other assorted low spots. I found a place where I could buy some steel, so I got some straight 2 x 4’s twelve feet long to use as weight spreaders. To weight it down I had thirty 2 kg. bags of lead shot, and it was only just enough.
I heated the workshop to 27 centigrade with two electric heaters and called it a night.