June 4th - May 2017 - install empennage, first wing fitting, misc

After moving everything to the airport in late April, I spent a few days getting everything set up.

At first it was very inefficient - having to move tools back in forth (keeping them in my car trunk) and trying to get things I needed to the airport when I needed them.

The airport is 20 minutes away from my house on a good day, and with traffic it's often 30 minutes.  Getting there and finding I didn't have some necessary part or tool was very frustrating.

It didn't take me long to get some shelving set up so I had somewhere to put things, as well as a portable camp table to use as a temporary desk.

The other thing I didn't realize is how much time can be spent by talking to people that come by (which is a blessing, but can be a bit time waster).  We are fortunate to have a very active building and flying community in our local chapter.  There are probably a dozen guys with either projects or flying aircraft at CPK, so there is a lot of help and eyes to make sure you aren't doing something stupid.

At any rate I decided I had to have a schedule I could depend on, so I worked out a deal with my wife.  Tues and an Thurs evenings I go straight to the airport from work and don't get home til 9, and Saturdays I'm there all day until 6.  That way she can plan when we do go out and know I'll be home if she needs something.  That was one of the best decisions I've made so far after moving.  I can spend my lunch hour planning work sessions and getting my punch/finish lists down pat, and when I get out to the airport I can hit the ground running.

Ironically week nights are by far the most productive.  All the builders pretty much leave each other alone and we work away.  If we do need help it's literally next door.  Pretty great.

The first thing I did was install the empennage - horizontal stab first, then vertical stab, then rudder, then elevators.






















I finally installed the cable fairings I made so long ago on a rainy day.




And pulled the manual trim cable through the holes.  What a bear.  Hopefully that was the last time.





Once that was done I got my kids to come out Sunday afternoon after church and lunch and we installed the wings so I could lay out the flap holes, root fairings, drill the rear spar, etc.

Becca did the honors inside with the bolts.  Greg and I wiggled, aligned and cajoled.  I used hardware store bolts that I had ground down considerably, so they went in reasonably easily.  I also lubed up the bolts and spar fairly liberally to prevent galling and to make it slide together more easily.




Both wings done.  Only took us about an hour, and cost me a couple of Blizzards.  Well worth it!  Finally looks like an airplane. :)



Now it's time to start working on all the stuff I need to do before I install the wings permanently.



First order of business - check the sweep.  Ended up being 1/8" forward on both wings.



Check the rear spar edge distance.  Looks good.



Start enlarging the flap pushrod exit holes.

At this point I noticed there was no way to get the bolts through the flap actuator weldment from outboard (which is what the plans showed).  I started to shorten some up, then changed my mind - leaving them like that would drive me nuts.  I just removed the weldment and installed them properly.



After twiddling with the sweep (really hard to get 1/8" out - turned out to be hard to move the tip just enough - very easy to blow right past the distance.  1/8" over 12 feet isn't much.



As good as I can get it.



After setting the incidence on both wings, drilled a #40 hole.  Then remeasured about a million times. :)




Fabricated the forward fuselage fuel tank attach points, then match drilled them to the fuse.




And to each other.



Clecoed on the inboard fairings so I could match drill them.  Need to drill them to size so I can install nut plates.  Also may have to trim them at the inboard side a bit (at least forward) to allow the gap seal to fit.







June 3 & 4.  Among other things, I final drilled the rear spar to size.




Doing the left side my drill bit broke, so I had to drive it out with a pin punch.  Fun times.



Left side drilled to size.  Big sigh of relief.  Glad to have this done.



Pretty good progress in the last month.  Get some more stuff wrapped up and I can start thinking about first engine run and fuel tests.




My friend Tim helped me finish the riveting on the forward skins on Wed afternoon.  (I forgot to take pictures of that) Now that that is done I can start reinstalling the avionics and get all the lines reinstalled.  That also opens the door to reinstall the panel and engine cabling. :)

June 4th, 2017 - move to KCPK - late April 2017

I've been on the waiting list for a hangar at my local airport, Chesapeake Regional (KCPK) since Dec.  I knew I needed to get the project moved because there were too many things I could not proceed with until I got the wings on and did some other stuff.

We finally had an opening in late March which allowed a chapter member to move into his own hanger. That freed up our chapter hangar in mid April.  I moved out to the hanger the next weekend, April 22.

I kicked around a lot of ideas for moving the plane, particularly the fuselage.  I have one friend that was able to get his RV-6A (with the gear on) into a 26' U Haul.  The gear on a -9 must be wider, because I'd have had to have pulled my legs in 3 or 4 inches to have a hope of getting it into the door. Scratch one option.

I have another friend that has a 26' farm equipment trailer, but the more I thought about that the less comfortable I was.

I finally decided to get someone that did hauling for a living and called a local hauling company with a  Roll Back wrecker.  I talked to the owner and he was so intrigued (plus concerned about being able to do it without damaging it) that he decided to come himself. :)  My kind of guy.

They did a great job.  After 6 years of work nearly to the day, this ended up being pretty surreal to me.  I never dreamed I'd have my own plane at an airport.  Pretty cool.

Pics:

Moved the fuse over to the door so I could just roll it out when they got there.





Yes Virginia, it does fit through the door.  About an inch to spare on each side.




I don't have any pictures of the gawkers, but we had a lot of strange stares.  I think someone called the police because a cruiser came by in the middle of the proceedings, then did a U turn at the corner and left.  :)



Driving through town on the way to the airport.  Man did they slow up some traffic.  One girl jogging nearly fell of the curb - she looked back 4 or 5 times.  Pretty funny.




Clear of town on the way to CPK.  We did hit a pretty good shower on the way but it only lasted a minute or two.  Washed off all the dust from working in the garage the last few months.



Getting ready to unload.  Strapping worked great on the way.  Didn't move an inch.  We had it secured fore and aft with webbing, and had cross straps looped over the steps.







We had to roll it down very slowly so we could keep the nose wheel from castering sideways.  I grabbed the tail and helped keep it straight that way.  Once it was on the ramp it was easy to just pull it into the hangar.



In her new home.  Time to start the final push to completion.



Pretty barren at this point.  This is our chapter hangar, which is available for builders when they are close to completion.  Pretty great to have this as an option.



This is a bit later in the week as I'm starting to move stuff out (and put the empennage on just because I could).  I rented a 17' U Haul later in the week and took out all the major parts - wings, benches, roll around tool box, etc.  Took a couple of loads to do all that.



This is the beginning of the time we all look forward to: putting stuff on for the final time.

June 4 - Wing tips and empennage tip fairings (work done in Jan 2017)

I made a couple of mistakes on the wing tips that would be good to avoid.

So, if any of you haven't done this yet - two pieces of advice:

Tip 1 - Don't assume if you get a great fit on the forward part of the wing tip (i.e. it fits super tightly on the forward curve of the wing) that it will fit or be a peachy fit once it is tight with either rivets or nut plates/screws.

 Make sure above all else that the tail edge aligns with the aileron when it is set to it's "in trail" position with the stick you made to align the ailerons properly.

 If you didn't do that (my original one was wood) I'd go to the hardware store, get some cheap straight aluminum yard sticks, and match drill those to the specified tooling holes in the tip wing rib.

 There is a *lot* of wiggle room with the tip trailing edge if it isn't nailed down. Use that flexibility to get a great alignment with the aileron, then working forward alternating top and bottom match drill to the skins and cleco it down.

 You'll probably have a fairly close fit to the forward skin, but the aft part is by far the harder to move after the fact, especially after you've installed the ribs.  The imperfect fit forward is easy to fix with micro or Superfil.

Once the ribs are in the trailing edge is nearly immobile.

 Tip 2 - go lightly with the trimming around the aft edge where the aileron hinge brackets are - it's very easy (I did it) to over trim then have to rebuild the skin to get a good fit.

 If you do foul either thing up like I did (I went for the tight fit forward idea) flox is your friend. I'm using nut plates and had to drill them all out and fill the holes with flox. Worked great. Actually seemed to be as strong as the tip glass.

Some pics

Getting ready to do one of the elevator tips.



Didn't have to trim it much - I just hit it with my hand held belt sander to get it straight and to clear some of the rivets.



Had to trim it just a bit at the back because it tapers to a point.



This is when I was first putting in the nut plates thinking that a great fit at the front would guarantee a great fit at the back.  Here's hoping you get both - surely someone must get  lucky every once in a while.



And this is after realizing that I couldn't get both, so I'd drilled them all out and was getting ready to flox them.  Epoxy sets up great on a warm day. :)



Holding the elevator tip tightly to the tip for match drilling.



Match drilled and dimpled and checking the fit.  I just did the dimples with my hand deburring tool.



Nearly done riveting it to the elevator.



Flox after curing and a boatload of sanding.  This is some seriously tough stuff.



Close up of the sanded flox.  It's transparent, but hard as nails.



Back side of the floxed holes.



Match drilling the wing tip rib to the tip.  I put mine in a bit further than the plans called for (maybe 1/8" or so).  It fit better that way.




Making sure everything lines up and the trim lines are all correct.  A lot of putting on and taking off of the rib, the tip, and the aileron to get it all right.



Working on the horizontal stab tips.  For mine, I found a curve gave a much better fit.  I was actually able to put the elevators on then trim the tips close to where they needed to be and put them on over the whole thing.  Made finding the final trim lines easy.  I'll spot clue some pink builder's foam in the hole, then glass over the top of it, and melt the foam out with acetone (got that tip from a Velocity builder friend).



It's funny - nearly done with the project and finally got a rivet fan.  Needed some bits from the Yard Store and decided to get one.  Would have saved a lot of time.  Using it to lay out the holes for the tip rib made it extremely easy to get good spacing.




Making a mess working on various things at the same time.



Contrary to the plans, I drilled my interior rib to the skin before I epoxied it in there.  I couldn't find a good way to hit it drilling blindly.  What I did was use the fan to lay it out, drilled it on the table, then put it in place and used my right angle "tight fit" drill kit to back drill to the wing tip.  Then I scuffed everything, floxed it up and used a couple of clecos to keep it in place while it all cured.  Easy to drill through the holes after it's cured, countersink and rivet.  I was pretty happy with how it came out.

Tues Jan 24th, 2017 - wheel fairings catchup

Sorry about the lack of updates. I've been working on the project, but finish late enough in the evening that I don't want to do an update so I let it go.

The last update was on the nose wheel fairings.  After I was done with that I started on the mains.  Basically the process is similar, but because of the angle of the mains when unloaded it's pretty important to install the wheel fairing and particularly the leg fairing with the gear unweighted so that it's aligned with the line of flight when airborne.

This first shot is how I did that.  I have a couple of boxes that I use to stand on and a long piece of dead straight aluminum angle (from riveting the rudder trailing edge way back when).  I dropped plumb lines from the fuse centerline down to the angle, which I leveled and weighted so it would be dead straight fore and aft and I could use it to align the longitudinal axis of the wheel fairing to.  It's easier than it sounds.

The stand with the jack on it is how I got the wheel off the ground. I put a long 2x6 under the main spar and jacked against that.  Worked great.




Just starting to get the fairing trimmed to get it over the wheel and around the gear leg.  The 2x4 block at the back is to hold the aft fairing level.  I also taped a wood block 7/8" (IIRC) to the top of the wheel to give correct internal tire clearance per the plans.




This shot gives an idea of what the gear looks like unweighted.  It definitely is canted from the vertical.




I clecoed the two halves together when trimming the cutout for the wheel to keep it symmetrical and so the lines would line up.  Used my Bosch jig saw with a metal blade for cutting, which worked very well and left a pretty clean edge.  Just needed a quick hit with sandpaper to take the sharp edges off.




Starting to get close to a decent fit at this point.




Inner view of the same setup.





It was pretty easy to drill the holes for the mounts to the tabs.  Just marked them with a sharpie and they were easy to see through the glass.  They only needed to be bent slightly to sit true to the glass surface.  Nut plates were installed later.




I finally hit on the best trimming method when I was on the last (right side in my case) fairing.  I just screwed two 2 foot 2x4's to my bench at the right distance apart, then clamped directly to them.  Worked really really well.




Fitting the right aft side.





Better shot of how I did the plumb bobs and the angle I used to make sure everything was straight fore and aft.



Rather than make my own intersection fairings, I found some on the net.  There is a guy in South Africa (http://rvbits.mybigcommerce.com/) that makes fairings and everyone spoke pretty highly of them.  I was going to order from him when I found that Cleaveland had them.  Cost nearly the same and I got them in 2 or 3 days.  I'm not an expert, but I don't think I could have made fairings as good as these even in two or three tries.  They look and fit great and are very well made.  Really happy with them.




Starting on the leg fairings.




Notches at the top for the hose clamp that will secure them to the gear leg.




Quick mockup to make sure they are the correct length.  I hadn't installed the hinges yet.




Here's the right side after it's finished.  Came out pretty well.  Hopefully I got it aligned correctly, but I won't really know that until first flight.





Here's another shot of the whole thing set up.  I'll secure the intersection fairings either with screws, hinges or perhaps a combination.




Time to move on to the bottom wing skins.