Apr 1st, 2012

After finishing the left aileron last weekend, this week has been focused on getting all the other wing surfaces ready. Right aileron and the left and right flaps.

With all the on again off again weather (i.e. no painting) my current best workflow is to prep all the metal parts I can including all the drilling, deburring and dimpling, fitting, any fabrication, etc., and get them ready to prime. Once a good painting day comes along, I prime everything I possibly can.

With that in mind, I started off the week finishing up the prep work on the right aileron. I haven't match drilled the spar yet, but have everything up to prime stage.

Started working on the left and right flaps. The flaps have 8 ribs per flap, the nose skin is a two piece affair, with single skins top and bottom.


Flap ribs

From Ailerons and Flaps

The hinge points are a sandwich of two nose ribs, two fairly light hinge pieces separated by a very hefty center piece. The center piece leaves enough clearance for the two hinge points to straddle the flap attach point on the rear spar of the wing.

Nose ribs are top left. The two large pieces on the right are the arms that attach to the inboard end of the flap (actually under the fuselage). The flap actuator pushrod attaches to the outboard end of the arm and is used to move the flaps in flight.

From Ailerons and Flaps

The light outer pieces are on the left - the hefty center pieces are on the right

From Ailerons and Flaps

Here's the assembly attached to one of the flap spars

From Ailerons and Flaps

Each flap has 3 attach points and is about 6 feet long total (over 1/2 of the wing span).

Here's one of the flaps clecoed together (minus the nose skins) hanging on the wing assembly to see how it all fit. The wing is upside down at this point.

From Ailerons and Flaps

Mar 18th, 2012

The main thing I worked on this weekend was the wing stand. Van has a sample plan (I'll try to post a pic later) of one possibility. I pretty much copied it verbatim, but of course had my own take due to space and what I had to work with. Overall I was pretty happy with the result. I only have two pictures.

Wing stand.

From Jigs and Fixtures

From Jigs and Fixtures

After adding some heavy casters on the bottom and padding material this will hold the two wings once they are completed.

Mar 11th, 2012

Been working on the ailerons, flaps, flap attach points, etc.

On a side note - yesterday we were moving Rich's frame from the Cherokee hangar over to Mark Banus's hangar. Wish I had a picture of everyone rolling it down the hangar row. It was quite a sight.

The Dismal Swamp Rats were helping to test out Mark's new "man cave". All it needs is some environmental control, carpet and some entertainment and he'll be the most popular guy at the airport.

From Ailerons and Flaps

Jeff Moreau kindly offered me a ride in his RV-8a (down to ONX and back). I'm still grinning. If you haven't seen it his plane is a work of art. Flies like a dream. Super light on the controls without being twitchy, rock solid (like it is on rails in a turn) and excellent performance. Wow. I want one. NOW. :)

From FKN Pancake Breakfast Photos

 
Started out the week test fitting the ribs, aileron counterbalance (about a 3 foot piece of what looks like stainless steel tubing), spar, stiffeners, skin, etc to make sure I had a feel for what was going on. There is a lot of opportunity for putting it together in the wrong way. Not good.

Here's the only pic I thought to take when test fitting the aileron ribs and spar.

From Ailerons and Flaps

Greg jayhawkered his knee (sprained it pretty badly actually) which was bad for him (couldn't drive) but good for me cause I got to go home early on Wed (!!!), and took the opportunity to prime a boatload of parts I've been wanting to prime but the weather hadn't cooperated. No pictures. Imagine a bunch of parts on a frame in the back yard with light green paint.

I'd been working ahead fitting and drilling and such but since I hadn't been able to prime I was skipping a lot of riveting. Took care of all the backlogged riveting Sunday afternoon.

Sunday I finished riveting the flap attach bracket reinforcements (925B&C), the aileron and flap gap fairings and back riveted the stiffeners to the aileron skins.

Reinforcement angles (925B & 925C) after riveting to the inboard flap hinge bracket.

From Ailerons and Flaps

Aileron gap fairing during riveting.

From Ailerons and Flaps

Flap gap fairing during riveting.

From Ailerons and Flaps

Back riveting the stiffeners to the aileron skins.

From Ailerons and Flaps

One of the finished aileron skins.

From Ailerons and Flaps

Feb 19th, 2012

Haven't had time to work on the project much the last few weeks. Went to the SportAir Workshop on Avionics/Electrical last weekend, and had a lot of stuff to take care of other times.

Currently working on the flap and aileron attach points. Once they are done the gap seals go on (these take up the space between the flaps/ailerons and the rear spar to improve aerodynamics), then I start building the ailerons and flaps.

Jan 21st, 2012

Got a fair amount done this week.

Started off finishing riveting the leading edge assembly to the main spar. Finally got to nail it down and I won't have to take it off again.

Test fit the fuel line and vent line.



Fabricated and test fit the float arm for the fuel tank. I'm using the resistive sensors. I kind of wish I'd used capacitive now - they're only $60 more, and by all accounts way more accurate, but going by fuel burn and time (especially once you've dialed in the burn rates) will be more than adequate. I have no intention of coming anywhere near empty.





Once I'd finished up with that and was satisfied everything was finished and correct, I did the final proseal session with the left tank. A while back I'd purchased one of the tubes of proseal (looks like a small tube of caulk) so I decided to use it since it was near expiration.

Worked pretty well - it was nice to have enough to do the whole job. The downer is that you have to use it all. It was more than enough to do the baffle plate, ribs, zbars, etc. I *think* one tube would be enough to do all the ribs if you want to do them in one session. The great thing is it is very easy to apply right where you want it.

Proseal session ended up being about a 5 hour deal all told. Did the baffle plate and all the rivets, as well as the Z bars. No pictures other that before and after. Too gooey and had to keep going. I'm pretty happy with it. Of course I haven't tested it for leaks yet.... :)

End results below:





Bolted the tank assembly to the main spar. Time to get ready to rivet the top skins.



Clecoed the inboard skin and doubler into place. Moved the spar (stored in the crate under the wing for the last several months) out of the way so I could get under there to squeeze and buck if I needed to.

Once I got back from work Saturday (added a shelf to our EVA array so we had to bounce a bunch of hosts - ended up losing a disk and had to rebal the array) Becca helped me back rivet the inboard skins. She did a great job. We did all but the tight bits in about an hour.



I finished up the tight bits on the rear spar and the lower rib (too steep an angle to back rivet) with a squeezer and straight bucking. Clecoed up the outboard skin and started on that.



An here's the state as of Saturday evening. About 2/3 done with the top skins.



Hopefully Becca and I can knock these out in an hour or so tomorrow. Once that's done it's on to the aileron and flap mounting points and working on the bottom skins. May try to get Jeff or another of our chapter Tech counselors to give it a once over before I close it up.

Jan 14th, 2012

Started riveting the LE assembly to the main spar, installed the Van's nylon conduit in the wings, finished up the stall warning assembly.

I was having fits installing this conduit - it is a really tight fit, and the corrugations made getting it through difficult.

Ran into a note on the VAF forums that suggested splitting it in half. Worked like a charm. I spent about 30 minutes getting the first 3 feet through the ribs, and 5 minutes getting the last 12 feet once I'd split it.

Jan 7th, 2012

Happy New Year! EAA 339's Chilly Chili cookoff is at Ray Batten's hangar at KPVG this weekend. Pictures of the festivities here.

Didn't get a lot done this week. Many unfinished things to take care of and some work.

Did get the holes for the stall warn (and maybe landing light, haven't decided) wiring installed. Ended up using the 1/2" bushings.



Drilled the holes out with a 1/2" unibit on a drill extension. Worked really well.