Sunday, September 30, 2012

Sunday, September 23, 2012

September 23rd, 2012

I only have a couple of pictures this week.  Not much that I did was worth a picture.  Just a lot of deburring and flanging parts getting ready to prime them.

Used my home made flanging tool (originally got the idea from the Van's 26 years of the RVator book) to flange all the seat ribs and bulkheads.

From Fuselage

The way this tool works is it has a wooden "anvil" mounted to a sheet of plywood that is angled backwards at 11 degrees.  By placing the rib/whatever on the surface,  putting the moveable lever inside (it is also cut at an 11 degree angle) and pushing the rib back against the anvil, the flange will be bent and then spring back to exactly square.  You can go through ribs like mad with this thing.  What a great idea.  I just made it out of some random stuff I had laying around.  Definitely a great time saver.

Here are all the seat ribs after flanging.


From Fuselage

Here are some of the fuselage bulkheads after deburring and flanging.

From Fuselage

These are the aft most fuselage bulkheads after flanging and cleaning up in preparation for priming.

From Fuselage

I wanted to get as many of these done ahead of time as possible so that I would be able to keep working without having to stop and prime every day or two.

Sunday, September 16, 2012

September 16th, 2012

Had a lot going on this week, so pretty much all that happened was inventorying the fuselage kit.

 I did get to mock up the firewall just to get a feel for it, but didn't do any work on it.

 The fuse kits seems to have more parts (and more rivets) than anything I've received so far. I spent about 14 hours total unpacking, inventorying, labeling and organizing all the parts.

 One thing I did this time that has helped a lot - if there was a part that wasn't well identified (angle, bar and tube stock often fits in this category) I marked it as soon as I identified it. That's helped a lot as work progresses.

 Here's the crate. It's amazing how much stuff Van's can cram in one of these things. Very little extra space.

From Fuselage Kit
As always, a very thorough and complete inventory is included.

From Fuselage Kit
Start unpacking the box and separating all the sub kits.

From Fuselage Kit
Control yoke and rudder pedal assemblies.

From Fuselage Kit
Seat backs, console and some misc sheet parts.

From Fuselage Kit

Box full of various parts - the large powder coated parts are the main gear attach brackets.

From Fuselage Kit
Main gear brackets out of the box.

From Fuselage Kit

Left and right rear skins and both bottom skins. One of the skins is shipped rolled.

From Fuselage Kit

Getting down toward the bottom of the crate.

From Fuselage Kit

Welded steps. I got one for each side.

From Fuselage Kit

Main gear legs were attached to the bottom of the crate.

From Fuselage Kit

This bag is nothing but hardware - rivets, bolts, washers, etc. Had to buy two more parts boxes to organize it all.

From Fuselage Kit

Misc angle stock. I labeled all of these to make finding it later a bit easier.

From Fuselage Kit

Sunday, September 9, 2012

September 9th, 2012

Made some pretty good progress this week. Started working on the pushrods for the aileron as well as the aileron bellcrank and attachment. The bushing has to be reamed to size. I didn't have a reamer at the time, so I just used a drill bit in my drill press. Worked great. Basically I took a 2x4, drilled it to the exact size as the bushing, then crammed the bushing in there (very tight fit) then carefully aligned the drill press/bit with the center hole of the bushing, applied a lot of cutting oil and slowly reamed it out. The fit is perfect. Did that for both bushings. Forgot to take any pictures. Here's the completed bushing in the bellcrank.
From Right Wing
Cut the large pushrod tubes to size, and drilled and riveted the end caps in place for both left and right pushrods.
From Right Wing
Did the same for the short aileron pushrods.
From Right Wing
I picked up a dynon roll servo mounting bracket from a guy on VAF, so I test fit that with the bellcrank to get a feel for how the whole thing will go together. I don't have the servo yet - won't buy anything like that until late in the project, but at least I have the bracket and got that installed.
From Right Wing
The last thing I did before storing the wing was to test fit the pushrods to the bellcrank and aileron.
From Right Wing
I won't close the bottom skins until later in the project (after I've finished the the electrical work), so I moved the wing along with the bottom skins out to the shed and put them on the wing rack I built.

Sunday, September 2, 2012

September 2nd, 2012

Trying to finish up the wings over the next week.  The fuse kit is due to arrive sometime next week.

I had dimpled the bottom skins with the DRDT previously and wasn't happy at all with it.  Just didn't look right.  I fiddled with the tension on the dimpler and did some samples and realized it was under dimpling, so I increased the tension on it and the dimples were nice and flat again.  I re-dimpled both the bottom skins again.  Much happier with the result this time.

From Right Wing


Deburred and beveled the bottom skins (no pictures - boring, and there is really nothing to show.)

Scuffed and deburred all the flap and aileron attach brackets and angles.
From Right Wing
Primed all the flap and aileron attach brackets and angles. While I was at it I also primed the inner side of the bottom skins and the aileron pushrod tubes. Riveted the attach brackets in place. Just for grins, I decided to attach the flap and aileron to see how it all looked and if things lined up pretty well.
From Right Wing
I went ahead and installed Van's nylon corrugated conduit in the wing along with a pull string.
From Right Wing
I also enlarged the tooling holes per the plans and installed nylon bushings in them. These will probably be used for the roll servo for the autopilot, which goes in the right wing.
From Right Wing
Riveted the flap and aileron gap fairings in place.
From Right Wing
Big moment. On Wednesday, the fuselage kit arrived. Once I get the work space squared away I will inventory it.
From Fuselage Kit