Wednesday 1
Traveling on business.
Thursday 2
Traveling on business
Friday 3
Traveling on business
Saturday 4
The servo for my Navaids wing lever / heading unit arrived while I was away. This seems to be a well constructed unit. While I had it apart I rotated the crank by 90 degrees. I plan to mount this under the seat on the passenger side. I know this is going to take quite a bit of fiddling about, but it will be nicely out of the way.
I fitted the fuel tank spacers up to the cockpit module. At first glance the surface of them is not parallel to the fuel tank and if the fuel tank was to bugle it would not be supported evenly. I suspect some rework will be required. Since these things looked like being "in and out" a few times, I used normal nuts and bolts.
I bolted up the CS14 & 15 brackets onto the Redux bed. I still haven't tried the wings on because the weather has been too crappy outside. I am hoping all of the careful re-drilling of the dummy spars is going to be correct, since everything is now been drilled and bolted in place.
The last job for the day was to clean up the plywood cover that goes in the tunnel. I had decided to give it one coat of bid because I am assuming that the mono wheel has the potential to sling mud and junk up there.
Sunday 5
I didn't do too much building today. I flew down to Schaumburg to meet some friends for lunch. Schaumburg is in class B airspace, only a couple of miles from Chicago O'Hare airport, so the airspace gets pretty tight around there. The day was quite hazy so I decided to get some radar flight following, but the controller was worse than useless with advisories such as "multiple targets at 12 o'clock" !!
I did do a little bit on the project, I gave the ply cover its coat of bid, and put in the short push rods to the aileron quick connect brackets.
Monday 6 ~ Friday 10
Work just seems too busy these days to get much done of an evening.
Saturday 11
I seemed to spend the whole darn day on the fuel tank spacers. Because of the shape of the fuel tank the bracket surface didn’t sit parallel to the tank surface. I managed to correct most of it by adjusting the ply wood base with an aluminum bracket at an angle. This left the face of the spacer parallel, but not touching the fuel tank.
Sunday 12
Well the goofy fuel tank spacer still was not correct !!. When it was all mounted up the push rod nearly touches it which defeats the whole purpose of putting the thing in. I removed them again and put some spacers behind the aluminum mounting brackets. This moved the whole assembly forward so it was just touching the tank, thus giving a much better clearance for the push rod.
I dug out the hardware for the fuel valve and mounted it up. I looked at this thing and it just did not seem right. It had one too many outlets and for the life of me I couldn't figure out how it was supposed to operate. After pondering it for a while I decided it was the wrong type.
Monday 13
I sent an email to Europa tonight to ask
about the fuel valve.
Tuesday 14
Wednesday 15
I got a reply back from Andy, and sure enough it was
the wrong type. Apparently they had a batch of 50 delivered, and some
"escaped to builders". Andy assured me that they would send me a
replacement via airmail.
Thursday 16
Friday 17
Saturday 18
Today was one of those days where I gained a whole new respect for "scratch builders". I took most of the day manufacturing a bracket to hold the servo unit. It mounts nicely under the seat, out of the way.
Sunday 19
I fooled around with the servo bracket a bit more, thinking it was looking a little bit tattered from all the fitting and re fitting, but I think it will do the trick.
I mounted up the rudder pulleys after a lot of measuring and
re-measuring. The problem I had was that the metal insert was not quite in
line with the back face of the cockpit module. This meant that when I drilled
the holes as per the measurements, I would have a problem fitting the nut for
the seatbelt. I guess that for my Europa the head of the bolt for the
seatbelt is going to be under the rudder pulley instead of the nut.
Monday 20
Wednesday 22
The new fuel valve arrived from Europa today so I fitted it up, and things started to make a bit more sense.
Thursday 23
Friday 25
Saturday 25
I cut a slot in the starboard seat pan to allow the servo push rod to hook up to the pitch
tube. I have recently purchased a router
attachment for my Dremmel and I used it for this job. I have a Permagrit
carbide cutter about 3 mm in diameter and this did a really nice job. When
I
fitted up the servo and put the cross arm on, it became apparent that the servo was about 3 mm too high. This really meant that my bracket would
have to be re-manufactured again. My admiration for "scratch
builders" went up another notch.
I put the locknuts on one of the fuel tank spacers, to give it an air of being permanent. This was a truly knuckle barking exercise. I would have done the other one but I didn't have any skin left for today.
Sunday 26
Jenny and I flew up to Madison for brunch and to meet up with some friends. When I arrived I asked the FBO to fill the aircraft for me. A couple of hours latter we decided to leave and I did a walk around the aircraft and we both climbed in. I called up and got my clearance delivery, our friends taxied out and the line guy began to wave me out. I ran though my check list and glanced at the line "preflight complete" and it bothered me because I knew something had changed, but I couldn't put my finger on it. Fuel !!. I shut down, got out, got my step stool out from the aircraft, and sure enough, one of the fuel caps was left off. I was extremely irritated to say the least.
In the afternoon I ratted around and found some 3 mm aluminum plate in my collection of bits and pieces. I made up an arm for the torque tube so that the servo push rod can connect to it. After lamenting the bracket for mounting the servo, I launched into making another one. It only took a couple of hours. I think I had better make some drawings and put them on the WEB site somewhere.
Monday 27 ~ Thursday 30
Generally pretty busy at work.