Tuesday 1
I started work on the second trim tab, it was the same situation as after removing the old drive pin, of having to cut right into the foam and do the lay up from the beginning.
Wednesday 2
I finished off the trim tab drive pin lay up tonight with the aid of the jig I had made. I think the alignment is going to be pretty close.
Thursday 3
I assembled trim tabs onto the stabilizers and put them on the plane. As I suspected, the drive rod needed to be shortened a little bit so I had to remove the nylon bushes and cut a little off each side. I put the bushes back in with some Redux and put the stabilizers on with the trim tabs to ensure that the bushes were held in the correct place while the glue set.
Friday 4
I took a look at the trim tabs and they seemed to be pretty well aligned so all the messing around with jigs was worth while. While I was running the servo arm up and down I discovered that it was just touching the mass balance tube at one end of the stabilizer deflection. I fooled around with it for a while, but it was apparent that I was going to have to pull the servo off and move it up a bit.
Saturday 5
I took the Comanche out for a run in the morning and met up with my son for breakfast. We had a bit of a local fly around and then I headed back home.
In the afternoon I removed the servo and shifted it up a bit on the bulk
head. I took the opportunity to put rivet nuts on the bulk head and I used
cap head screws. If I ever have to remove the darn thing when the top is
glued on, it might now be actually possible with out cutting big holes in the fuselage.
I did a little work on the instrument panel in the evening. I have copied an idea from the Comanche. It has a dimmer potentiometer with an on-off switch that turns on the navigation lights. I am going to do the same, but I will have the switch operate a relay for the navigation lights and use a linear regulator for the panel lights. A switch pot had arrived in the mail through the week so I mounted it in place along with an aluminum knob.
Sunday 6
I decided to do a bit more panel work today. I had ordered a UPS SL70 at the Sun and Fun air show and it had arrived through the week so I decided to mount it up. I am now being very careful working on the panel because I have such a lot of time invested in this piece of metal. I got the cut out done okay and mounted the tray up into the chassis bay. I actually have 100m of panel space left, and unfortunately its not quite enough room for a Sky Map. Oh well, that's one expenditure I won't be tempted to make !
My nice new Air Master propeller had also recently arrived so I fitted the electronic controller into the panel also.
Monday 7
I had purchased some of those nice cranked control columns that Europa sells, last year so I thought it was about time I did something about getting them up. The first step was to correctly size the bushes that fit into the control assembly. I was able to do the outside by setting it up on a mandrel in my drill press and spinning it like a lathe. I could then just run a strip of emery across it and it made pretty quick work to get a snug fit on both of them.
Tuesday 8
It was time to get some paint out tonight and give the control columns an undercoating. At least its now warm enough to do this outside. A couple of months ago the temperature was still close to freezing point.
Wednesday 9
I gave the columns a top coat of white enamel tonight and set them aside to dry. I find that the paint cures much harder over the period of a few weeks.
Thursday 10
Before the top gets bonded on I have a few jobs to do with fitting up the wings, so between my wife, daughter and neighbor we moved the fuselage upstairs into the garage.
Friday 11
Saturday 12
My
ex partner in the C150 called me up and asked if I could safety pilot for
him. He is working on his instrument rating so we headed west and past
Oshkosh. It was a nice morning flying, but I hadn't been in the 150 for a
while and I had forgotten how small inside they were and how slow it was
!. Mind you, flying is flying and it is still more fun than most
other things I could be doing.
I fitted the wings to the fuselage and to my surprise they went on fairly easily. I had lowered the cradle during the winter so this meant that my wing jigs also needed to be lowered.
I had noticed that the surface of the wings were showing signs of rubbing from being in the wing stand so I made some carpet slings to hold them inside the wing stand.
Sunday 13
One of the tasks I didn't quite get done last year when the fuselage was in the garage was to finish the root extensions for the flaps. I had made the foam pieces so I dug them out and glued the block onto the starboard flap. One tip I can offer here is to make sure that the flap drive pin has been either secured with Redux or Locktite and that all of the internal surfaces are scuffed up ready for the internal lay ups. This would nearly be impossible to achieve once the extension is in place.
I was going to get organized to shape it and possibly do a lay up when my son turned up. He was about to head off for a drive three hours west and he prevailed upon me to fly him instead. Well it was a nice sunny day so I didn't take much convincing.
Monday 14
I shaped the starboard flap root fairing external profile this evening. Of course if I had saved the foam from the ends of the flap like the manual said, then I wouldn't now have to be messing around with foam, sanding and blue dust !
Tuesday 15
The manual calls for two layers of glass on the outside and 3 on the inside so I cut the cloth and covered the foam with some peel ply. The outside lay up was pretty quick and easy, but it was quite apparent that the inside one was going to be a lot of fun. I put on the heat lamps and called it a night.
Wednesday 16
I trimmed back the bid to about 2mm short of the foam. I was going to remove the foam but it still hadn't quite cured to be really hard.
Thursday 17
No building
Friday 18
I removed the foam out of the flap roots ready for the internal lay up. It took a little longer than I thought, to get all of the traces of foam out.
Saturday 19
I made a paper template for the shape of the bid for the internal lay up. I did it in two halves, I think a single piece of cloth would be too difficult to manage.
I pre heated the resin and got the workshop ready for the lay up. Once I was all set I called my number one fiber glassing expert (my wife) down into the workshop to help. This job can be best described as tedious and very time consuming, it took us nearly 2.5 hours to get the 6 pieces of cloth in place.
Sunday 20
I was feeling a bit rusty on instrument approaches so I rounded up a safety pilot and did a few. It was a bit busy so we stopped after 4 approaches.
In the afternoon I removed the port flap and glued on foam for the flap root extension.
I trimmed back the starboard flap and put on the wing. I had a really difficult time getting the pin in the flap drive tube because the self aligning bearing ball jams, so I cut in a 25 mm inspection hole and the only way I could get the wing on was to poke something in there to get it to line up. I am not too sure if this is a problem with mine, or if this is normal.
( Put in a photo)
Monday 21
No building
Tuesday 22
No building
Wednesday 23
No building
Thursday 24
I had been pretty busy at work this week, but I did manage to get down to the work shop this evening to trim up the foam block on the port flap
Friday 25
I wandered down to the workshop to finish up trimming the foam block on the port flap root extension.
Saturday 26
Cut up some cloth and did the external lay up on the port flap extension. I then spent a pretty solid day sanding all of the surfaces on the upper and lower seams of the fuselage modules and stern post in preparation for bonding.
Sunday 27
Removed the foam and did the internal lay up on the port flap. It was not less tedious that the other one, but one thing I did learn was to put in a lot of flox right in the narrow part of the lay up. This made getting the cloth around this spot much easier.
Monday 28
I tried to fit the port flap up to the wing but it wasn't going to fit on at all, also he pin still had some epoxy on it and it wouldn't slide on. It looks like I might have to shorten the flap drive tube a couple of millimeters on each end.
I put the top on and drilled all of the holes I need for final bonding. I have decided to use mostly cleoco's and I will put a smear of Vaseline on them to stop the Redux from sticking onto them. There seems to be a lot of fastening points, particularly around the cockpit area and on the stern post.
Tuesday 29
One of the next jobs coming soon is to install the main wheel and tail spring so I prepared them for painting using the Alodine products.
Wednesday 30
I was going to use normal white gloss enamel but someone suggested I use "Appliance Paint". This is a poly urethane paint that apparently is pretty tough. What I didn't know is that this stuff is much thinner than enamel and it just ran everywhere. What a mess.
Thursday 31
I tackled a few of the runs with wet and dry, and it looks like the whole job is a candidate for a re-paint. Oh well, I hope the paint is as good as everyone claims.