Friday 1
I cut out rectangular hole for the approach / navigate mode indicator in my instrument panel. This took quite a bit longer than I thought but it turned out to be quite a nice fit. I spent a long afternoon cleaning out the garage because I have decided to move the project upstairs to fit the wings to the fuselage. I wanted to get this done before winter. Fortunately its a 3 car garage so I can fit the wings on an off in this area.
I finished off the day by moving the wings and fuselage upstairs.
Saturday 2
After a little playing around Marty helped me drill the wing and flap pins. I didn't quite get the flap pin in the right spot so I think I will make a jig to make sure the other flap pin exactly matches up.
I set the wings up on some saw horses and drew a sight line between the bushes as recommended in the manual. I also set up a rule on top of the wing parallel to the spar. To get the best sight line I used some drills that were 18" long and I took it out in 3 steps with the final one being 13/32". On my first holes I used a center punch but after having the flap one drift a little I did the others with a 1/16" pilot drill. The pins fitted nicely into the tapped holes, but it is possible to screw the pin that is drilled for the pip pin too deep and the hole in the socket won't line up with the pip pin hole in the wing pin.
Sunday 3
I was fairly busy moving my number 1 son into college today, but I did get some time in the workshop. The area where the wing pins fit have a hard point in the fuselage which needs 4 plies of bid on the inside and the outside. It was a bit humid so I purchased 2 extra heat lamps so I could locally heat four areas at once. Jenny helped me and we got a fairly nice job done in a couple of hours.
Monday 4
I had a bit of an "aw shit" today. I had my Makita battery
drill sitting in the top of the engine fire wall and I knocked it off when I was
fitting the wing up. It landed on an angle on the chuck and destroyed
it. Off to the hardware store to spend $179.00 for another one.
I fitted up the port wings to see how the pins lined up and at first look things seemed pretty good. I think I am going to make a bit of a jig to hold the wings at the correct incidence angle and height, because putting them on and off is a bit of a pain. Note the wonderful wing support under the port wing.
Saturday 9
Today we had our EAA chapter 18 picnic. Although
it was at one of the local airports it was not really a flying kind of
day. I supposed I could have filed an IFR flight plan, but thee seemed
something wrong with the idea of doing this just to go 20 miles. It was a
pleasant gathering and I just had to show them the photo of me sitting in the Europa making airplane noises
Sunday 10
I made up a mounting block out of plywood for the rear wing sockets. This is a trial and error type of exercise which took quite some time. I have a 235mm sanding disc that fits in my saw bench which I found pretty helpful, but if you have a bench mounted belt sander then it would be even better.
I decided that my "ironing board" wing support would not win me any friends in the domestic department so I made a template for the profile of the underside of the wings. I then fitted these up to some $6.00 saw horses and this gave me a nice set of wing supports
The last job for the day was to make up a tufnol block as a wing spar guide. I made the port side and it turned out to be pretty quick job. I cut it and it was really close to being right, so a quick little sand and I was home free.
Monday 11
I glued up a few slabs of plywood and made second mounting block. This
one was just a bit thinner than the port side, but making something to fit a
compound curve can only be described as interesting.
.
Thursday 14
It was time to get the sticky stuff out again. I covered rear mounting blocks with some bid. As I started to lay it on it was quite apparent that it was too small so I pulled it off and tossed it in the bin, oh well.
The one highlight of the day was that I sold my share in my Cessna 150 today. I got back what I had spent on the aircraft so it didn't really owe me much. I really flew the heck out of that aircraft, I think I must have put over 200 hundred hours on it during the short time I owned it.
Friday 15
I had another go at covering the rear wing socket mounting block. This time it went okay, but when I went back a few hours latter the cloth and separated from the wood so I had to tear it off again. I did manage to Redux on the spar cap to the port spar without doing that twice over !!
Saturday 16
Well I managed to cover the rear mounting blocks with bid and get it to look okay. I guess they call it third time lucky.
Sunday 17
I have been putting off the job of actually fixing the wing sockets onto the fuselage. The manual makes all kinds of warnings about getting this set up to be true and correct otherwise the wings will be difficult to put on and off. I had done quite a bit of preparation prior to the job. The most helpful thing was to made up a couple of stands for the wings that held them at the correct height and pitch. Although you can't see it in the photo the wing stands have adjustable feet. This enabled me to set the 2.5 degree wing angle exactly. Then it was only a matter of ensuring that both wings were swept back the same amount. The only interesting part of this exercise is to decide what you are going to use for a reference.
Because I have pretty well checked out my alignments before hand the actually gluing up of the front and rear pins only took a couple of hours. so with done I went down to the airport and went flying for a couple of hours.
Tuesday 19
I made a template for my Narco 122 VOR/LOC/ILS/Marker beacon. While this thing fits in a standard 3.25 instrument hole, nothing much else about the cut out as standard. It worked out well, but If I had paid closer attention I could have saved my self some effort.
Wednesday 20
I made up the second tufnol spar guide for the starboard wing and like the previous one it went pretty quickly. The trick is to make it fit to size with the wing in place. This can be done by cutting the block out and then very carefully sanding it to fit with a bench mounted disc or belt sander.
Thursday 21
I took the night off under orders !!, it was my birthday
Saturday 23
Well today was the moment of truth. Would the
wings come off again ? Well I must admit to having a few fears because it
certainly took some
tugging, but with a bit of a crack the port and starboard
wings came off and the wing sockets stayed on the aircraft. I cleaned up
the Redux so I could drill and bolt the four sockets. The manual describes
a step to reinforce the inside for the front sockets but I think that would be
best left until the top is glued on.
It was time to rummage around my ever diminishing boxes of Europa parts and find all of the bits required to make up the tie bar. I gave the bar a coat of Alodine Prep Coat and red primer. I think I will put the finish coat on when I paint out the luggage bay. This whole assembly went together pretty quickly and I had it drilled and in place without too much bother.
Sunday 24
I must admit to being a bit surprised on how far into the luggage bay that the tie bar protrudes. I was wondering if mine was worse than others, but a quick flip through some photos reassured me that it was about the same as other Europa's. I made up the ply blocks for the gusset plates shaping them with the bench mounted sanding disc. To glue them in the correct place I used 5 minute epoxy and temporarily clamped them in place using the steel gusset plates and some small G clamps.
These blocks were then covered with four plies of bid. I surrendered this job to Jenny, she seems to just have the knack of persuading the bid to go where it doesn't want to go. I put the heating lamps in place and called it a day.
Monday 25
Well a quick look at the blocks revealed that the bid had stayed where it was supposed to so I drilled and mounted the steel gusset plates. Getting the plate drilled by the fuel tank was a bit difficult, but I managed to get a hole in by using a long drill bit.
Tuesday 26
EAA Chapter 18 meeting tonight. I hadn't been along for a few months so it was nice to catch up with everyone.
Friday 29
The luggage bay has a cut in the tunnel to allow the tie rod to pass through which has to be filled in . I cut this back with the Dremmel ready for a lay-up. I did this as per the manual, there seemed to be no special tricks to this.
Saturday 30