wing holding jigs came in very handy. One thing I noticed is that
the wings started to slide in and out a bit easier.
Sunday 1
I couldn't find the hardened washer that goes with the spar pip pin assembly a few weeks ago so Jim Thursby at Europa's Lakeland office sent me some new ones. Of course once he had done this I found mine !. The be honest I generally find that most things I think are missing from the kit aren't missing at all, just misplaced. The manual calls for this to be glued onto the spar cap and covered with a bit of bid. This meant that I had to sand off the nice coat of paint I had carefully put on the spar cap.
The next job for the day was to cut a slot in the cockpit module for the gear retract lever. Now the trick here is to cut a slot as narrow as possible and then get its axial alignment correct by mounting up the lever with just one bolt. The lever can swung to make sure the slot is parallel, and once the slot length has been determined it can be widened. I decided not to make the aluminum cover plate up until I have mounted up the flap retract mechanism and the gear assembly.
Saturday 7
The next job on agenda was to manufacture the flap drive tube. I had to rummage around to find all of the bits. I had invested the time to make up four boxes with lists of contents to hold all of the these loose bits but despite this I still find it takes quite a time to find things sometimes.
One tip I can offer is to enlarge the ends of the tubes slightly. Ultimately the tube may have to be shortened and the bearing holders that fit in the end will need to be removed. If you pound these bearing assemblies in they won't come out too easily. The other tip is to make sure that the bearings will slide into the bearing holders before you coat everything with Loctite.
Sunday 8
I went flying in the morning but I did manage to put in a couple of hours on the project. One of the jobs I had put off was to fit the starboard flap drive pin. The reason was that when I had drilled the port side I knew that the hole had drifted a bit. I made up a cardboard template of the port pin location and flipped it over to locate the position of the starboard pin.
Saturday 14
I cut slots in fuselage for the flap drive tube. To do this I scribed
the arc for the slot by holding a pencil against the flap drive pin and
swinging them through the full arc of movement. This was a fairly time
consuming process because the wing had to be rigged and and de rigged many times
and the wing holding jigs came in very handy. One thing I noticed is that
the wings started to slide in and out a bit easier.
I found that I had to shorten the the tube by about 4 mm. Actually I didn't discover it until latter but the tube ended up pretty okay for length when the flaps were down but a bit tight when the flaps were up. So remember to check this when cutting this tube to length.
Sunday 15
I marked out the slots in the bottom of the fuselage as described in the manual. If I was to do this again I would have mounted the flap drive tube and put the arms in the mounting tabs at an angle to mark out the slot. The other tip I can offer is cut the slot as narrow as possible and widen it out after. I ended up with one too wide and having to fill it. I Reduxed a small piece of ply and reinforced it with some cloth impregnated with Redux.
I treated all the aluminum parts with Alodine and gave them an undercoat of zinc chromate, along with a top coat of white enamel. The flap retract tube got treated with Alodine prep coat, red primer and white enamel. As I was doing this outside the autumn leaves reminded me that soon it was going to be too cold to paint things outside.
I had become tired of working around the luggage bay so I cut it back to the correct height. To be honest I don't know why I hadn't done it quite some time ago because its quite a bit easier to work.
Saturday 21
I was time to Redux in the pivot arm brackets. This seemed like they needed to be precisely located, and the sort of thing that would be hard to
undo. 
The manual suggests that you position them with wedges, but it didn't seem a
great idea to me.
I got some self tapping screws that just fitted lightly inside the holes. I then used these to get the string line spot on and then to get them level across the tops. Once I had them adjusted I removed them and I coated the underneath of the brackets with some grease. I then mixed up a big glob of Redux, put it in place and pushed the brackets into it. All I had to do then was to thread up the alignment string and get them repositioned and the height and level was correct.
Actually the whole operation went much faster than I expected so I had time to top coat some of the parts for the flap retraction parts.
Sunday 22
I took my daughter up to Mackinac Island for the day. Its a small island at the top of lake Michigan. It has an airstrip on the Island and is a nice place to visit.
Monday 23
Well it was time to see if my idea was as clever as I thought. I removed the self tapping screws and drilled out the holes. The screws had the added advantage of making a good center for the drill to follow. I did the back holes using a long series drill, but I found that the two holes closer to the bulk head very difficult. I couldn't get my angle drill in place to do it and it was just plain difficult to get a drill in position.
Tuesday 24
Friday 27
One little problem I had was when the flaps are fully retracted the pin jams in the bearing on the starboard side. The overall length of the flap drive tube was a bit long by a millimeter. I managed to relieve a tiny amount around the base of the pin and it cleared up the problem
Saturday 28
I did a trail fit up of the parts and it all seemed to work just nicely. One of the things I was worried about was that maybe both flaps wouldn't fully retract, but they were just fine. Since I had it set up with small clamps I took the opportunity to mark out the holes in the flap arms for drilling before I disassembled it.
I flipped through the manual and the next job was to make the fairings for the flap roots. The first thing the manual tells you to do is to find the bits of foam that you saved from the flap lay-up. Well I certainly didn't have that anymore so I had to rat around to find a decent block of foam to start with. I found the best way get a good shape was to stick sand paper on the side of the fuselage and rub the foam against the fuselage. I fooled around with that for a while and got tired of it.
I had discovered that the centerline for the bell crank assemblies on the starboard wing and the CS14S bracket didn't line up. I had gone to a lot of trouble to make the dummy spar accurate and used this for alignment. The port side was still good. I suspect that this got distorted when the cockpit module got bonded in. This must be a common problem because the manual describes this problem and recommends re drilling the hole in the spar. It doesn't offer any suggestions on how they might be aligned once the spar has been drilled.
What I did was to get a piece of brass tube that slid over the AN4 bolt. I attached a bit of wire to it and put it on the bolt on the CS14P bracket. I then put the bolt in the spar with some Redux and put the wing on. I then moved the bit of tube with the wire that I had attached to it so that it was over both bolts, thus ensuring the two bolts were aligned.
Sunday 29
This weekend was Halloween and the usual tradition is for people to carve pumpkins and put a lamp or candle inside them. The local airport thought they would do something different. They decided to host a competition where you could buy two pumpkins for $5.00 and you got to toss them out of your airplane at a target on the runway. This generated a huge amount of interest, even the local television turned up with a crew. The FAA turned up as well to give the whole show a safety check over.
I was the "bomber" for my ex partner in the C150. All I can say is that I don't think I will give up my day job.
Monday 30
I departed overseas to China on a business trip.