tailwheels

Unintended Adventures

Month: May 2016

So that’s what it looks like

By

On May 28, 2016

In S-20

Covering the fuselage has been going pretty well. It’s time consuming, but it’s nothing crazy.

I’ve been working on and off throughout the past week to try and keep making steady progress. As of tonight, all the sides of the fuselage are now attached. The right side needs to have the initial shrink done and then all sides can be shrunk to 350 degrees.

I’ve learned a few things through covering the fuselage and using Stewart Systems. I’ve had a few cases where the fabric would come un tacked when I would brush glue down through the top of the fabric in an area that I had previously tacked down with the iron per Stewart Systems procedure. I think the issue is that my iron wasn’t hot enough or I didn’t have enough glue underneath the fabric for it it really adhere. This didn’t cause big problems, but I did have to pull the fabric and then tack it down again after the glue had dried. If anyone is confused, shoot me a message/email and I can go through it in more detail.

The next part that took some learning and I still don’t feel great about doing is the transition from the top center former and the vertical stabilizer. So the procedure I used seemed to work ok. To preface this, I followed the same sequence as in the RANS manual. I attached the fabric to the bottom longeron completely and then started tacking the fabric into place around the cabin and working my way towards the baggage compartment. I then attached the fabric around the vertical stabilizer. This let me get everything in place and then trim all the excess fabric off with some degree of certainty that I had enough everywhere. Then I started working on tacking down the fabric onto the top center former working towards the transition. What I found was that I did need to slit the fabric around the radius area, but I didn’t have to cut all the way to the tube to get the transition to lay down. It still took a lot of work and I’m not completely happy with the amount of wrinkles I have, but I think it will look better after the final shrink. Overall, it worked out pretty well and I ended up with good coverage over the vertical stabilizer tube in that area.

The other interesting part it the baggage compartment. I also followed RANS here as well. I got all the fabric for the side in question fully glues down and all the wrinkles out of the bonded area. I then applied some glue the inside of the baggage window area so the fabric wouldn’t fray when I cut. Of course enough fabric must be left to wrap to the inside of the baggage window frame and glued down. This worked out pretty well and the fabric played down on the window frame quite nicely during the initial shrink.

I have some decent wrinkles, but I’m planning on them being taking care of during the shrink. I didn’t shrink at 250 degrees on the left side because I was concerned with pulling the top center former out of alignment. Now that both sides are on I can at least shrink each side equally. That’s the plan at least.

I’ve got lots of pictures, but it’s late and I don’t have them readily available to upload. I’ve been making lots of time lapse videos as well so I’ll be posting those as well. If you have questions about pictures, let me know. They all make sense to me because of the order and I did it myself, but that doesn’t really help others sometimes.

(15.5 h)

 

Looks like we’ve got ourselves an airplane

By

On May 25, 2016

In S-20

Finally have started covering. It took a while to get the fuselage ready to go and cleaned up, but it’s finally going.

I put anti chafe tape around any sharp edge and exposed rivet I could find. I may have gone a little overboard, but I’d rather not worry about it afterwards.

Started with the bottom of the fuselage first. Nothing too hard, but it took forever to make all the cuts. I felt like I wasn’t making any progress at all. Cutting the fabric to size isn’t hard, but it’s very nerve wracking for me. We’re using Stewart Systems covering process, so we had glue on the frame and then tacked it down with an iron to hold it in place so we could work some big wrinkles out. After it was fitted, I brushed glue down through the fabric and wiped off the excess following the Stewart Systems procedure.

One thing I noticed was that as I brushed glue down into the fabric, the fabric was coming off of the tube. I tried tacking it down with a hotter temperature on the iron and that seemed to solve the issue, so I think my iron was just not hot enough to really tack the fabric down. I looked over the fabric carefully after everything had dried and it was stuck on there pretty good, so I’m not worried that it didn’t adhere. Also, the fabric to fabric joint is the important one which will be next.

For the later part of my Tuesday evening, I started on the left side of the fuselage. Fortunately I had a friend stop by just in time to help me cut the fabric to length, We then applied glue to the bond area for the left side and then began to fit the fabric and start trimming it down. I finished up the night with only one more big cut to make because I was getting tired and didn’t want to fuss with the vertical stabilizer transition.

(7.5 h)

 

Hey Look, it’s a plane!

By

On May 16, 2016

In S-20

Finally got back into the swing of airplane building last weekend and this past weekend. Tonight will be another build session, but I’m accomplishing a decent amount of little things, so I don’t want to get too far behind.

The last things I had to do to wrap up the boot cowl area was to fit-up the instrument panel and visor.

I started the visor and it went together relatively simply. It’s not even all the way across, but I’ll be attaching some sort of fabric to it and the ends are around 1/8″ different on each side. (I will be waiting for people to mention these differences when the plane is flying. I figure it’s a way to gauge readership. ha ha)

After that was done, I drilled all the pilot holes in the instrument panel blank to 3/16″. I then drill one hole in the panel frame to 3/16″ so I could attach the blank and then transfer drill the remaining holes. One thing I noticed when putting the blank on was that it seems like it is just a hair too wide, so I had to fuss with it for a half a second to get it past the tubes and flush with the panel frame. I didn’t want to shave material off the side of the blank, because the holes are pretty close to the edge already, but if anyone has some thoughts I’d be happy to hear what everyone else has noticed.

After the panel frame was drilled out to 3/16″, I went and enlarged all the holes on the panel blank to 5/16″ because they will receive some rubber grommets. Don’t enlarge the panel frame holes lest you want to buy more aluminum.

After that was done, I had to enlarge a few holes on the boot cowl skins and I added an extra two holes where the top side skin rivets to the side skin. This seems to be a popular addition; including the factory.

One thing I do have to modify for sure is the fuselage tube exits on the top side skins. My skins are hitting the tube, so I will remove some material to get rid of that. The one thing to be careful of is not to remove too much or else you would need to make new closeouts for that area.

After all that I removed the entire boot cowl assembly for storage while the fuselage gets covered and painted.

Next was to get the fuselage on the rotating stands so I could move it around myself and to ease with covering. One thing I noted though was that I’m not sure how I can cover/paint the tail with it on the rotator unless I just made a very bulky mount back there. I’ll be in contact with some other builders or RANS, but if anyone gets the notion to speak up, I’d like to hear some solutions.

With it up on the stands, I was then able to start on the tasks I needed to complete prior to covering. The one I started and almost finished this past weekend was upgrading my seat tracks. RANS changed the seat track system shortly after I bought my kit. I didn’t see the new ones until I had riveted my system in and I had sort of accepted what I had. After seeing another builder’s plane with the new style though, I really wanted to switch them over. RANS has been using the old style on a lot of planes for a while I was told and I don’t think there is a safety issue. My main reason was it made me feel better with the design of the new tracks holding me in the plane.

That means I had/have to drill out 22 stainless steel rivets. I failed at this task on some wing rivets, but the new found knowledge meant I was able to make pretty quick work of them. At least as quick as stainless steel can be drilled with a hand drill. I would have finished yesterday, but my bit gave up on the last two to be done. I’ll get those taken care of today and hope the new parts arrive today as well.

Maria helped get the fuselage on the stands and also helped complete some of the smaller tasks like attaching nut plates in the baggage area. I had neglected to do these when I was doing the baggage compartment out of what I can only assume was me really wanting to move onto something else.

One highlight of putting the fuselage on rolling stands was moving it out into the parking lot to sweep the garage out. I missed getting a picture, but it was funny to just see a plane sitting in a condominium parking lot.

The last issue that I’m trying to figure a solution for is around the boot cowl strips that go around the firewall. You can see it in the last two pictures below. I’m not sure why this happened or how to fix it, so if anyone has an idea or did something already, please let me know.

(11 h)

 

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