Saturday 1
Sunday 2
Monday 3
Tuesday 4
Wednesday 5
Thursday 6
I went around to Marty’s to do some flight planning for our proposed trip to Florida, but the weather prediction was for a snow storm. It seemed hard to believe because it had been about 70 degrees F for the past couple of days.
Friday 7
Marty and I had planned to fly down to Florida to go to the Sun and Fun fly-in in his RV6, but as the weather man predicted it dropped about 150 mm of snow. We went out to the airport, checked the weather computer and called flight service. There seemed to be a possibility that we could go due south and then east along the back of a high pressure system if the clouds lifted in the morning.
Saturday 8
I got up at about 6.00 am to be greeted by a sunny day. A quick check with flight service and we were good to go. Our first stop was less than 200 miles away at Champaign Illinois where we picked up the approach charts we needed for Florida. A quick look at the weather for our next leg to Birmingham had us filing an IFR flight plan at 8000’ feet to stay above the clouds. What a trip, we had tail winds giving us a ground speed that stayed between 170 to 180 knots all the way. It was clear and calm at that altitude, but the lower oxygen levels had me yawning a bit.
I flew through the clouds on our way into Birmingham, which was my first try at some real IMC. We picked up some rime ice that I could have done without and I was still on the instruments for a good while after coming out of the clouds, but the warm conditions quickly melted it off.
We stopped and rested for a while, and ended up eating out of vending machines because the local on-field restaurant had just closed. We filed another IFR flight plan to Plant City, Florida and got under way. The conditions were equally nice, except for 20 minutes in IMC, which I flew. It was quite lumpy inside the clouds and I found it difficult to fly the gauges from the right seat, but it was good experience.
We got in at around 7.00 pm local time and we were both feeling pretty beat after 7.1 hours of flying.
Sunday 9
We made our way to the air show first up, and with in 10 minutes of being there had met some people from our local EAA chapter. I wandered over to the Europa stand and looked over the next things I wanted to build on my project.
I tried putting my name down for a flight, but unfortunately Europa were not flying until Tuesday, and we would be well on our way by then. I did get to meet Andy Draper in person and it was nice to be able to finally put a face to the name. I took a good look at the EIS engine monitoring system and spoke with the designer for a while. It seems a good system and I think I will go with this product.
Monday 10
We were feeling pretty “Air Showed” out, so we flew over to an airport adjacent to the Kennedy Space Center. This facility is well worth a visit. We checked the scheduled launch for Thursday but it had been pushed back, so we decided to return to Milwaukee the next day.
We went to the builder’s dinner hosted by Europa in the evening, and I managed to meet up with my friend Tony Renshaw and his family from Australia. It was good to catch up with all of the news from home. It was also good to meet a few of the builders and exchange ideas with them. I took a look at the factory Europas, and checked out an idea for an alternative sight gauge. What they had done was to run the tube up between the pilot and passenger, and then across the top of the fuel tank. The only down side to this idea is that they had to put a small door in the arm rest to allow you to see the bottom of the sight gauge. In principal I like the idea and I think I will copy it.
I am still resisting putting in a capacitive fuel sensor in the tank because I don't want to put a hole in the top of the tank, I must admit to seeing a really nice sensor. This was a 5 point sensor with a microprocessor built into it. It allows you to calibrate empty, quarter, half, three quarters and full.
Tuesday 11
We got up early and went out to the airport to get a briefing for our flight back to Milwaukee. Sounded like it was going to be a marginal day so it was definitely IFR. We managed to be above the clouds for most of the trip, but had to spend about an hour or so inside rain clouds. The ride was fairly smooth, but it was nice to be able to share the actual instrument flying because it got to be tiring after a while.
Getting closer to home we descended below the clouds because there was a risk of ice at 4000', so the last 100 nm was at about 2000', just under the clouds. The run home was 8.3 hours.
Wednesday 12
I was still on vacation, so I decided I would like to get the cockpit module done by the end of the week. The first order of business was to decide how I wanted to lay out the fuel hoses. I bought some new rubber hose, I am not sure if I really needed to or not, but the automotive fuel in the US seems to have a lot of undesirable additives in it which make short work of rubber hose.
I decided to install mod 49, which puts a fuel filter on each tank outlet. This greatly simplifies the hose layout, and makes it much easier to change the fuel filters. The objective of this modification is to allow you to switch to the reserve side should you suffer a fuel filter blockage.
To make the fuel hose lay out simpler I rotated the outlets in the tank by 180 degrees so the hoses would not have to cross over each other. This meant that the copper water drain pipes had to be re-bent in the reverse direction to again be at the lowest point in the fuel tank.
I used a round Permagrit file to make angled holes for the hoses to be brought through the cockpit module into the seat pan area. I made the holes slotted at an angle to minimize the bending of the rubber hose. I also replaced the brass fitting on top of the fuel valve with one that had a 90 degree bend in it. This meant that the hose didn't have to bend to go into the cockpit module.
Thursday 13
I finished off the fuel hoses today, covering any areas that could potentially rub with some nylon spiral wrap. This included where the hose went through the cockpit module into the seat pan area. I also fixed some 3/4" conduit saddles on to the fuel tank with some bid, for the hose to run through. The idea was for the saddles to hold the hose away from areas they may rub on, and that they would be large enough to thread the hose through in the future when they need replacement.
I cut out inspection ports and made some clear acrylic covers for them. I had previously put the fuel tank in the base of the fuselage and marked around it. This gave me a good way of getting my inspection ports marked out in the correct spot. I smeared the acrylic covers with some grease and taped them up into the holes. I then ran 3 layers of bid around them and called it a day.
Friday 14
I started out by dragging my son out of bed at the ungodly hour of 11.30 am to help me do a test fit of the wings into the cockpit module. To my relief everything fitted and lined up as it should. I did have a lot of trouble getting the pins to slide in and out smoothly, but that seemed a matter of alignment of the wings.
It was time to scuff sand the cockpit module which really took the best part of 3 hours. I use a 50 mm sanding drum on my electric drill with a 50 grit grade and it does quite a nice job.
I dragged the module inside and put it in the fuselage to make sure that I didn't have any high spots. I also took the opportunity to accurately mark out the fuselage for scuff sanding and to cut out the skin around where the CS15/15 brackets were located.
I popped out the acrylic covers for the
inspection ports and they worked out nicely. I cleaned it up with the
Dremmel and marked out the flange for some nut plates.
Saturday 15
This morning I scuff sanded the fuselage, and like the cockpit module this also
took the best part of 3 hours. I noticed that
the manual made reference
to applying bid to the inside of CS14/15
and wrapping this to the outside of the fuselage. I removed
the brackets and sanded paint off the inside of them. Yet another
nice coat of paint sanded off. I thought I had better remove the pulleys and
cover the threads just in case some Redux finds its way onto something that it
should not. The last job was to put one more saddle on to the fuel tank, as I
noticed that I had forgotten to put one in for the fuel line going forward.
Sunday 16
I have wanted to get to this stage for a long time. As near as I can tell I have no more excuses left not to bond in the cockpit module. I put a tiny bit more spiral wrap on some hoses; spot sanded a few more places and checked all of the nuts and bolts for the last time. Marty and Eric came by and it was time to mix up some Redux. I mixed up 400 grams in the first batch and applied it using an icing bag. I only applied it to the fuselage; I left the cockpit module dry. The icing bag does a nice job, but if I were to do this again I think I would have put a fine layer on with a notched spreader first and then put a good bead on with the icing bag.
We had put a couple of planks of wood across the fuselage and set the module on top. We swung it down at an angle and this seemed not to smear the glue around too much. The first observation was that we didn’t have enough Redux in place. I should have been much more generous with it. It was fairly easy to introduce more by just sliding the icing bag into the gap and squeezing it out, but it would be even easier to have too much and scrape it off.
I did have one problem where I could not get the part that is near pilots/passengers thighs to sit down. It seemed to have a good 6 mm gap, no matter how much we pushed and grunted. It would have taken an awful lot of Redux to fill it. I decided to do some emergency surgery and cut it out. I will replace it with a couple of layers of bid at a latter time.
I used self-piercing metal screws covered with grease to pull it all down, I used nearly 2 boxes of the things. Even with so many screws I still had dry spots, so I had to inject some more Redux in with a syringe via small drill holes. The manual didn’t say so but I found it helpful to cut out part of the wheel well. I cut back around 50-mm. from the marked out edge. This lets you get up and make sure that plenty of Redux is around the flange on the inside.
With three of us on the job it took about 3 hours, 700 grams of Redux, about 150 metal screws and three bowls of hot chili !!
Monday 17
Well everything still looked good, but the sight of
over 100 screws poking through the cockpit module was not great. I decided
that the next part of the process would be to clean off the grease, slightly enlarge the holes to
remove any grease, counter sink them and fill them with flox for the first go
around. The plan was to do one quarter of these each evening.
Tuesday 18
I got home from work far too late to do any of these tonight.
Wednesday 19
I managed to co-opt Jenny down and we did a few more of the holes.
Thursday 20
More hole filling.
Friday 21
Saturday 22
I sanded around the seat pan areas where I had removed a bit of the cockpit module and made templates for some bid to replace it. It seemed to take a couple of hours to prepare the front section and baggage bay area ready for a lay up. I cut some cloth for the job and called it quits for the day.
Sunday 23
Jenny, (who is by now the fiber glassing expert)
and I busied ourselves doing the lay up in the seat pan, baggage bay and
front section. By now most of this type of thing is pretty routine, and
the job turned out nice. I think the section that I replaced in the seat
pan area ended up stronger than the original.
Monday 24
I was late home from work, but I did spend 30 minutes widening out the holes around CS14/15 in the fuselage.
Tuesday 25
EAA Chapter meeting tonight
Wednesday 26
Thursday 27
I manage to persuade Jenny to come down to the
workshop and we did the lay up between the fuselage and the CS14/15
brackets. It went fairly well with the exception of me discovering that I
needed 3 ply's instead of two. It didn't matter all that much, except that
I had completely cleaned up everything in the workshop. I guess it was
better than discovering it the next when it was dry.
Saturday 29
I got the port stabilizer out and fitted it up. A bit of a quick trim with the Dremmel had it fitted nicely. By this stage Marty and I were feeling a bit hungry, and looking out the window we could see the clouds breaking up. Well we decided it must be time to drag the RV 6 out and go buy a $100 hamburger.
Sunday 30
It was one of those "sun is shining and grass is rising" type of days and I had a bit of yard work to take care of. I did manage to paint a few bits and pieces that belong to the Europa, then I dragged out the C150 for a couple of practice instrument approaches.