Saturday 1
I dug out the CS10 pitch tube today and cleaned off a small amount of external corrosion. I was a bit concerned that some corrosion had started internally as well. I got some emery strip on a rod and gave the inside a clean up as well. I then got out my Alodine prep solution and get the inside a good coating. Once that was dry I gave the outside a coating of red primer.
Sunday 2
I needed to give a few bits and pieces a coating of paint, but its been too cold outside, and I can’t really do it inside either. I painted the CS10 cross link tube and the aileron cross link tube with a coat of white enamel. To do this I resorted to warming the surfaces with a hair dryer and giving them a coat of paint out side. I then gave them 10 minutes to dry outside and brought the bits inside. This seemed to avoid most of the fumes getting cycled through the air conditioner in the house.
Monday 3
I fitted up control push rods and pop riveted CS07/08 assembly. It was a bit tricky getting the nose of the pop rivet gun on thus tight spot so I drilled out a bit of quarter inch rod too make a spacer. This worked a treat; I was able to pull the rivets up nice and tight. I set the CS08 arms up to be 90 degrees and set the aileron cross link tube to be the correct length. The whole assembly swings quite nicely.
Friday 7
I have been waiting for the weather to be okay to do an instrument check ride. I scheduled a ride for Thursday morning but is was really windy so I chickened out and rescheduled for Friday. I got up in the morning and it was still windy so I just went out and did it. It just went fine, the approaches I did needed plenty of wind correction, and the holds had interesting timed lengths.
So ends another chapter in my flying career. I found the 6 months a pretty busy time, I had to fly at least twice a week but it was worth it. Having the extra skills opens up a whole lot of options if the weather turns nasty while on a cross-country.
Saturday 8
And now for something a little different. My instrument panel got a modification. It sort of came about as a few ‘what if discussions’ to some surgery on the panel. A month ago I bought a Narco 122 nav-aid. This instrument is a combined localizer, Glide slope, VOR and marker beacon all in a 3.25 inch instrument. Well that’s the good part. The not so good part is that the darn thing is 11” long which means is would have to go into the far right hand side of the instrument panel. This would then mean for instrument approaches it would be out of my normal scan.
Marty and I were kicking around some ideas and thought , wouldn’t it be nice if if we could build out the instrument panel near the “standard six pack” to be deep enough to accommodate the Narco 122. And so it came to pass. Marty cut a hole in the panel, thus moving me past the point of no return. He then got busy and made a nice blue foam profile for the panel. By the end of the day we had a mock up of what it was going to look like
Sunday 9
I took the day off, and I didn’t go flying either !!
Monday 10
Tuesday 11
Wednesday 12
Thursday 13
Friday 14
I checked my dummy spar and found that the holes for the pins where misaligned. I floxed up the hole at the end ready for re drilling
Saturday 15
I laid the dummy spar up against the starboard spar and put a half-inch bolt through the hole I had not floxed up. I then put in some thin walled brass tube into the other spar hole and drilled out the flox in the dummy spar. I now have some correctly aligned holes.
I did a bit more painting I gave the aluminum a coat Alodine, zinc oxide and white enamel. I am not sure why I go to the trouble of painting something that will never be seen, but there you go !
Sunday 16
Today was an aw shit day. I discovered that the CS05 torque tubes were not correctly spaced. They are supposed to be 26.25 inches. I carefully made them 26.5. There is nothing like seeing a something and interpreting as something else. Both Marty and I made the same mistake, including me ticking it off in the manual.
Well both Marty and I contemplated this for a while and it was quite apparent that the tabs on the torque pitch tubes were never going to line up with the aileron push/pull rods. My choices were to either move the tabs on the pitch tube or unglue all of the hardware with one of the CS05 tubes that we had carefully set up.
Well after some more contemplation we decided to do something else instead. I dug out the foam needed for the rear fuselage bulkhead and we proceeded to manufacture this. The manual suggests doing a lay up on the first side and leaving it. We decided to do it all in one go, a bit like making a sandwich. We aew able to do one side, flip it over onto some cling wrap and peel ply, then do the second side lay up. Once this was done we covered it with peel ply, cling wrap and put a piece of weighted down chipboard on top.
We also took time out to level up the fuselage in its jig. Marty has a really nice digital level, for aircraft building it’s a bit like American Express, don’t leave home with out it!
The last job for the day was to flox up the holes in the dummy spar that are used for aligning the CS14 saddles. These where not in the correct place when checked against the starboard spar.
Monday 17
I removed peel ply from the bulk head lay up and it looked really nice. Marty had put extra resin on the peel ply to compensate for the soak up effect that the ply would have. I thought it would be too much resin, but it was spot on.
I got a couple of half inch bolts 7 inches long from the hardware store and used these for holding the dummy spar up against the spar I then got a ¼ drill and drilled through the spar into the block which is used for aligning the CS14 saddle. I am going to have to get the port wing out of the garage next week in order to drill the second hole for the port side.
I Called Andy at Europa, and he advised to take out one of the CS15 tubes and move it over one quarter of an inch. I look at it and it seemed like a hell of a job. I had scuffed up all of the surfaces nicely on the tufnol bearings it was stuck really well. In addition to this the front and back bearings were nicely aligned. After some thought I decided to remove the outer tabs on the torque pitch tube and have them moved out by 1/8” each. One of the guys in our chapter is and aircraft welder so I gave him a call.
Tuesday 18
Well I thought I’d go down into the workshop and cover the instrument panel modification. I got all of the sticky stuff out, along with some bid and proceeded to micro up the blue foam. Just at the right moment Jenny wandered down into the workshop so she got to put some gloves on as well. The block was a compound shape and I thought I would have a few problems covering, but not so. Jenny deftly pulled the bid around the block and it came out perfectly.
I decided to move only the outer tab on the torque tube rather than bust out all of my fiber glassing. This was not what Europa had advised but I decided to go ahead with this approach.
Wednesday 19
Eric came by tonight and took the torque tube. He seemed to think is was a no brainer to fix, in his opinion a quick and simple job. Well bless his heart because I am darn sure that breaking out all of my epoxy bonds would be a really rotten job.
Saturday 22
I went down into the workshop and admired the instrument panel mod for a while and then decided it was time to put it in the panel. It took quite a bit of careful shaping of the glass work until I got a snug fit. I then put it in was some bid and put some ply into it for good measure.
Marty came by in the afternoon and busied himself with shaping the rear bulkhead. I decided that I didn’t have enough room in my workshop so I busied myself with removing an old, very large lounge suit that the previous owner had left.
Sunday 23
I modified my wing stand to accommodate both wings. This actually turned out to be a much quicker job than I thought. My partner in the C15 came by and wanted me to safety pilot for him so we went flying for an hour. It was handy that he came by because he got the job of helping me move the port wing from my garage ceiling into the workshop. This gave me the chance to drill out the dummy spar block, which I had floxed up.
I used the dummy spar to temporally position the CS14 bracket. When I was happy on where I thought it would go I scuff sanded the bulkhead and made a Redux bed for the bracket.
Monday 24
I popped off the CS14 bracket from the Redux bed and cleaned it up a little. I intend to use the wings for the finale alignment of the CS14 brackets and I will drill them out at that time. It’s too cold at the moment to drag the stuff outside for this operation; I am hoping that it will warm up a bit. next month
Tuesday 25
I went to the EAA Chapter meeting and listened to all the general yarns getting swapped around. The chapter has a lot of active builders, but only a few composite people. One guy nearly has a defiant finished and another is at the sanding and filling stage of his Cozy 4. Most of the other folk are building RV’s or rag and tube aircraft.
Eric gave me my torque tube back and I have to admit that the welds he put on are more substantial than the original ones from the factory.
Wednesday 26
Marty and I fitted up CS14 cuddle plates & reduxed in them in place. I am not exactly sure what purpose these thing serve, but far be it from me to second guess the designer.
Thursday 27
Discovered that I did not have mod 46, some how or other with all my moving around this modification didn’t catch up with me. I called Europa and they said they would post one out to me. I guess my nicely painted tube will get yet another coat of paint.
Saturday 29
One of the guys in our chapter is nearly finished building his RV6 and invited Marty and I to fly come up and look at it. We flew up in Marty’s RV6 and it turned out to be interesting. When I got the airport Marty announced that I need to get used to flying different kinds of aircraft if I am going to test fly my Europa. The plan was I was going to fly it and he wasn’t really going to brief me much. Well that made for an interesting day. Enough said.
In the afternoon I floxed in the 70mm bits of plywood around the spar pin holes and tried out my repaired torque tube. What a perfect fit. Unfortunately my nicely painted creation was starting to look a bit motley by now, and with the pending removal of the end caps it was going to become even more so.
Sunday 30
Marty and I have been pondering the
rear bulkhead. We made the rear bulkhead as per the 3 part template and
it fitted okay except for the last 3/4" where there was a gap of around
5/16".
This got me to start wondering about the bit that goes into the top molding. I
was worrying if this wasn't going to fit properly either, so I dragged the top
in from the garage. The top molding did not want to fit properly on the bottom
half of the fuselage at all. In fact it
wasn't even going to go close down at the tail end.
After much pushing and poking I pulled out the 5 3/16" spacer (see page
18-2 Rev. 30 Oct '97) and then everything started to fit properly. The
top molding sat nicely on the bottom molding, and the bulkhead fitted nicely
into the fin.
So, this left me the following questions:
- Why is this 5 3/16” spacer there?.
-
Is the dimension correct?
- At what time does it get pulled
out ?, is it before I epoxy in the bulk head or after or does it stay in
forever?
- Does this 5 3/16" spacer create a critical dimension that I will
discover at a latter time?
The only conclusion was I really
needed to confer with Andy.
In order to salvage some useful work
out of the day I cut out some ply for the CS14 brackets and glued it on. I also
replaced the temporary hardware in the cross-link tube and the torque tube
brackets with the correct lock nuts.
I also drained the fuel out of the
tank, (which I never had to put in there in the first place!) and washed out it
out with soapy water. It was surprising
how much crud came out. I ended up
running about 20 gallons of fresh hot water thought it. I then put a quart of alcohol in it and gave
it a good rinse out. This hasn’t
entirely removed the petrol, but I hope it’s enough so that my gas fired
furnace doesn’t get a whiff of it and create a headline story – “Airplane
builder prematurely fly’s skyward”
Monday 31