May 2000

Monday 1

I finished off fitting up the port stabilizer tonight.  It took a couple of,  "fit - sand - refit" cycles to get  nice even gaps that would allow for the correct aileron deflection.  It seems like 3 mm is about right.

Tuesday 2

Wednesday 3

Thursday 4

Friday 5

Saturday 6

This weekend was the EAA Chapter's annual flight down to Dayton.  The local EAA Chapter has a pancake breakfast, and we usually take in the USAF museum.  The weather was looking a bit marginal for the return trip, and nearly all of the group were VFR pilots, some low timers. so we made a day trip to Oshkosh instead.  We had a group of 15 aircraft that departed a towered airport, so that created a bit of interest for the controller.  It was a nice VFR day, and my daughter did a fair bit of the flying.

Sunday 7

I got all of the bits out ready to make the push / pull tube for the stabilizer.  I could not find the Euro 002 set screws anywhere.  It was quite frustrating because I know I have them somewhere.  After searching for an hour I when down to the local hardware store, but they didn't have any high tensile ones in stock. I knew that I had some AN5 bolts of the correct length so I bought a 5/16 die nut and made my own.  Construction of this thing is pretty straight forward, I cleaned all the bits with alcohol and assembled them with Loctite.  I got the digital level out and made sure that I had the 14 / 6 degrees of movement and cut off 50 mm of the tube. I pop riveted it all up and installed it.  Well so far so good you would say.  When I put it in I found that I didn't  have enough travel.  Why not ?.  Because I had not put the pins through the fork to securing them onto the torque tube.  Now I have found myself with a carefully constructed item 25 mm too short.

Called Andy at Europa and explained to him how I had carefully constructed the push / pull tube for the stabilizer too short.  I was ready just to order the bits to make a new one, but Andy seemed to think is was retrievable. His suggestion was to machine up an extension out of EN19 steel, or better.

Busy with work

Still too busy at work

Today was windy, cold and generally not flyable and Marty turned up.  We took a look at the push / pull tube for the stabilizer and discussed Andy's suggestion. I was looking around through my box of Europa bits, and lo & behold I found the two Euro002 bolts.  As it turns out these things are 12mm too long. What we decided to do was to remove the end caps, put these bolts in and see if it was going to be long enough.  Well for anyone that might be worried about the end caps coming out, don't.  After drilling out the 8  rivets,  I needed to apply heat to the Loctite and belt it with a hammer to get them out.

To cut a long story short, the longer bolts worked fine, and to give it a bit more rigidity we planned on replacing the lock nut with a 20mm threaded sleeve.  I will put it on with Loctite and I am sure that this structure will be stronger than the original design. 

Well after that little bit of adventure we got all of the bits out and constructed the assembly for the mass balance weights.

I made up the plywood stop assembly, and covered it with two layers of bid.

I cut up some cloth and made up the bid bracket for the plywood stop assembly.

I didn't get home until late.  It had been a long day and  I felt like I needed some "attitude" adjustment so I dragged out the Cessna and went flying.  A  friend of mine has a grass strip about 20 miles away so I dropped in to practice my soft field technique.

I spent 5 minutes trimming up the bid bracket I made the night before.  I made it out of 4 layers as described in the manual, but I think an extra layer or two would have really firmed it up.

Wednesday 17

Marty swung by for a little while with his swaging tool so we made up the wires to secure the mass balance arm.  Despite our very best effort with tugging on the wires we couldn't get it tight enough.  I think I will make a simple tensioning device for one of the wires.  Marty made up a couple nice threaded sleeves. I put them on with some Loctite and ran them firmly up to the end cap. They have really done the trick, it looks better than new.

Thursday 18

Friday 19

Saturday 20

I did the final assembly of the mass balance weight assembly today.  It is looking pretty good.  Notice the simple wire tensioning device I put in one side of  the tensioning wires.  It was a nice sunny day, so I dragged out the C150 and did a couple of young eagle flights.

Sunday 21 ~ June 1

Traveling in India on business.