Author: Ryan Page 4 of 7

Looks like we’ve got ourselves an airplane

On May 25, 2016

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 Ryan

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)

Almost building time

By Ryan

On April 26, 2016

In S-20

Te semester is drawing to a close with finals happening next week. I’ve planned a lot for the summer and hope that I can at least get half of it done.

This past weekend I went to a three day course on the Stewart System. It reinforced some covering techniques and more importantly we went all the way through a topcoat on the frame. I learned a lot and found out that the painting thing probably won’t be so scary. It won’t be a showplane, but I figure it’s like a baby. It’ll never be ugly. 🙂

Plan for May is to start covering the fuselage and the small parts like flaps and rudder. When the fuselage is covered I’m going to get a coat of EkoFill on and then transport it up to the airport for paint. I’ll also try to get a few of the small pieces covered in EkoFill so I can have those ready if I’m able to get them going on color coats.

Finally, if that all goes well and by some miracle I still have some summer time left, I’ll try and start covering the wings. The idea is that having the fuselage covered and painted will keep me plenty busy getting things installed over the fall and winter.

So stay tuned to see how much I actually get done haha.

(15 h)

First picture – Frame covered with no tapes

Second picture – Frane with brushed cross coat of EkoFill

Third Picture – Two sprayed cross coats of EkoFill

Fourth Picture – Three cross coats of color

The beginning of an end

By Ryan

On March 20, 2016

In S-20

This past week was spring break so I didn’t have to go to any class. We had decided back in January to go somewhere and with some good luck on our side we made it to Paris (the French one). We left Chicago on Sunday and returned to Chicago on Thursday. It was a short trip, but we think it was the best amount of time. Not too long to get bored of the city and not too short to not see the few big items on the Paris checklist. It was a lot of fun and we ate a lot of good food and more than the average persons baked good consumption. It did mean that there wasn’t a lot of time left over the break to work on the airplane, but we did manage to get a few things taken care of.

First, I worked on wrapping up the boot cowl. I feel like I have said that for 4 1/2 months now, but it truly is getting closer. Between yesterday and today, I got the cowl strips drilled out. This was a chore in itself and I never did it the same way twice. You have 3 small strips and 3 wider strips to place and transfer drill so you get a lot of time to screw up and try different ways. My boot cowl will have several 5/32″ rivets in it due to holes becoming over sized. If you recall my last posting, we had decided to not place the strips in our initial drilling of the boot cowl skins from the firewall support angle tabs. So what that means is that I had nice #30 holes and then I came back around and transfer drilled through them into the cowl strip. At first I was drilling through the boot cowl skin into the strip. This is problematic because the tab on the firewall support angle is probably not going to stay put and you end up enlarging those holes. That’s bad because then a rivet or cleco won’t keep those pieces together. It took a while for me to get everything lined up, but I did get the majority of the first strip drilled out to #30 with about 10 5/32″ holes to cover up mistakes. As a note, I spent a lot of time realigning the strip and support angle to the boot cowl skin so I didn’t make a lot of holes. Some better sheet metal workers might know some tricks, but I don’t and I went very slowly.

The next piece was the larger cowl strip. This is the piece that the cowling of the plane will eventually attach to. This piece seemed easier probably because I had spent 2.5 hours on the smaller pieces the day before. Another part that made it easier was that is was on the inside of the firewall support angles so it just needed to be pushed flush against the support angle and it was set. You should take note that everything is straight or use a lot of tape. This strip seemed to be steel (Thought of that after I sat there drilling into it with a standard bit) and it didn’t want to conform. We had a nice chat together and it finally agreed to behave. The other part is that I was now transfer drilling through 3 sheets of metal, so everything would sort of line up when I put the drill bit through the hole. I’m positive my holes are not perfect #30 sizes, but the clecos hold and everything seems sturdy. I’ve got it on my list of things to talk with Ed about the next time I call RANS. This drilling took half of what the smaller spacer strips did.

One other thing to bring up that I may not have mentioned is that a transfer drilled all the hole in the top skins from the firewall support angles and then I proceeded working with the small strips and then the larger cowl strips. This probably contributed to the holes being enlarged. I’m not sure an easier or better way to do this, so I will ask the all knowing this week, after I have completed the task and can only kick myself 🙂

Maria helped out this weekend as well and she doesn’t like me to watch over and scrutinize her work, so we found some tasks that needed to be done that were relatively quick to do and she had something to show for it afterwards. If you are wanting to involve the family, spouse, or friends in the building process, deburring and sanding is not the best thing to make them do the whole time. Although it cuts down on the time I have to do that stuff, Maria is no fan of deburring sheet metal for two hours. I’m not either which is why I like other people to do it 🙂

Maria put together and riveted the pedal assemblies together today and installed the rudder cable pulleys and cables in the tail yesterday. We’re getting a lot of things checked off the pre-covering checklist. We did have to sit and stare at the pedals before riveting to decide on when to paint them. In a perfect world you probably would paint each piece on the back and then rivet everything together and paint the front. But since you will probably never see the backside of my rudder pedals, we decided that as long as it looks decent back there, we won’t worry about it at all.

A fellow local S-20 builder found some neat two-part spray can paint from Eastwood. He tried it on a few parts and it looks great. They have a rat-rod black which looks really good and I think I’ll be using that for quite a few of the small things on the airplane.

And for my last complaint, my large boot cowl strips don’t seem to be aligned the best. They all meet at a good point and appear to be flat against the firewall, but they still are slightly tweaked. Cosmetic things on this airplane are very frustrating for me

(6 h)

Boot Cowl Blitz

By Ryan

On March 5, 2016

In S-20

Today was a very successful day. I had two friends (Rich and Bob) come down to assist in the building process and we got a ton done on the boot cowl.

First step of the day was to clean up the sides and transfer drill the holes from the stiffeners to the sides of the boot cowl. After that we riveted them to the boot cowl sides (Pro tip: Do not rivet the top stiffener on each side. You will need to transfer drill through the skin into the top side boot cowl skin. Luckily, aluminum rivets are easily drilled out.).

After that, we fitted up the instrument panel frame to being fitting the top boot cowl skins. We had to remove some of the frame to clear some welds, but nothing major. One thing we couldn’t figure out is how to attach the instrument panel to the panel frame without riveting the panel frame to the fuselage. The panel frame has a mounting hole that corresponds to a tab on the fuselage, but the panel does not. So we just rolled with the panel frame and did a lot of checking and measuring to make sure we were staying flush with the tabs on the firewall. In the end, this seemed to work out, but I guess we won’t really know until the panel goes in.

The top sides sit right against the tube that connects the firewall and the top of the fuselage. I think there will be a rubber grommet there, but there isn’t much space. I’m going to look into that because I know it needs something there and I don’t know if I have enough space.

When we first started putting on the top sides it didn’t seem like they would reach down to the stiffener location on the side skin. After transfer drilling holes starting from the middle at the top and moving outboard, everything did fall into place. We spent a lot of time looking it over and I would suggest the same to others getting to this part of the build.

Another thing that we did was to transfer drill the top skins from the firewall tabs without the spacer strips in between the tabs and top skins. We thought that this was making it too complex and we will do that on the next work day.

After we finished, we had drilled out all the holes for the boot cowl. The next items are to fit up the spacer strips, fit up the instrument panel visor, and debur. A lot of deburring.

Big thanks to Rich and Bob for the help. We got a ton of stuff done that would have taken me weeks probably at my current pace. Also, it was a lot easier to have help when fussing with the boot cowl. I wouldn’t have wanted to do it by myself.

Next potential build time is over spring break which will be in two weeks. Midterms are this week which are stressing me out, but I’m not the first. I always have trouble breaking these engineering problems down. I think I just need more practice!

(18 h)

Cleanup and introductions

By Ryan

On February 22, 2016

In S-20

Since I decided to go back to school, building has slowed down considerably, BUT we’re still getting stuff down. My goal for the year is to get the fuselage covered and painted so I can final install parts while I wait to buy an engine/avionics.

This past weekend was a good aviation weekend. I was able to meet another S-20 builder in the Midwest and we looked at my project and another local S-20 project. Always fun talking about airplanes. I did get about 1.5 hours of work done on my plane Saturday morning. The activity of the morning was finishing up the bottom boot cowl stiffeners. As of now, I am ready to start drilling holes into the boot cowl bottom and sides from the stiffeners.

(3 h)

One issue I ran into with the boot cowl sides was how they cover the tabs where the cowl will attach to the firewall/boot cowl (I’m assuming). My sides don’t completely cover these tabs completely. I’m a little worried about the edge distances on them, but I haven’t bothered to ask RANS yet. My weeks have been crazy busy lately. Go figure.

On Sunday, Maria was around to help and we got the “shop” all cleaned up and all the remaining parts on the parts board. I had originally put up most stuff paying more attention to items for the wings. That time has passed, so we re-organized the board and got all the remaining loose items on the board. Should be a lot easier to find things now (I hope).

We also worked on some of the aileron pulleys since we could work on it together and we would have something to show for our work in the end. I need to get the rudder pulleys installed, but I was thinking about those so we got some aileron cables done. There is one pulley that I will have to unbolt when I install the cables, but it won’t be that big of a deal to do.

Getting started again

By Ryan

On January 24, 2016

In S-20

I didn’t do any work on the plane since before Christmas. Between traveling and starting school again there wasn’t enough time.

Yesterday I had the help of a friend who was very helpful and we got a lot done. Not much to see, but it was a decent amount of work. I’ll get some pictures in the next update which hopefully is only a week or so away.

Our work was focused on wrapping up the side and bottom boot cowl skins. We got all the tabs drilled out on the skins and fabricated the stiffeners. That was about 3.5 hours of work all together. We spent about an hour screwing around with the right side skin. For some reason, things just didn’t line up the way we had planned and the side skin ended up not covering all of the tabs that are on the forward side of the firewall. We found that by moving it a little everything looked better. The problem was that the holes in the skin no longer lined up with the tabs on the fuselage. I’m a very indecisive person when it comes to stuff, but we finally set ourselves on a path to fix it. We ended up enlarging the two aft holes in the top of the skin to 3/16″ so it would have a tight fit and not just a gaping hole. Time will tell if I obsess of a 1/16″ difference in rivet sizes for two rivets (I think I will forget, eventually).

With my friend’s help, we made quick work of getting the skin rolled, holes drilled, and other various tasks to make sure the fit was good. The stiffeners were also short work with two people working on different tasks.

My next step is to finish transfer drilling the holes from the stiffeners to the boot cowl skins and then moving onward. I believe the top skin and panel fit up are next.

Getting closer to covering time! On that note, I haven’t done any additional covering since my last post.

(6 h)

Covering begins!

By Ryan

On December 18, 2015

In S-20

This past weekend I started working on the boot cowl and covering some small items.

The boot cowl has been going together pretty good. I’ll try to get some pictures up soon. The last post mentioned the firewall. This past weekend I worked on getting the bottom and one side panel fit up. The bottom panel took a little bit of work to get fit. One thing that cause a minor issue was that the weld in the center of the bottom tube protruded forward of the fuselage. This meant that the flange on the bottom skin wouldn’t sit flat against the firewall. The issue that it caused was that there is an opening on the bottom skin for the nosewheel strut exit. This isn’t needed for my plane, but there is still support structure for those who do use a nosewheel welded into the fuselage. The opening in the skin slides over this structure a little. All that I had to do was open up the hole on the bottom skin some and it slid right over and all was right in the world.

I also got one side of the boot cowl fit up with the help of some friends that stopped by. We got the tape on the fuselage to mark the centerline of the tube on the door frame and proceeded to line up the side skin. As noted by some other builders, the manual mentions that the cut out in the bottom of the side skin should line up with the bottom of the fuselage tube. In reality, it lines up right around the centerline. This is the only way for it to be in line with the center of the door frame tube. Not a showstopper, but required some additional thinking which can be troublesome for us kit builders.

That was all done on Friday. Sunday I started covering an aileron and the left stabilizer. I decided a few weeks ago to take the plunge and switch to Stewart Systems for the covering process. The main benefit to me was a less hazardous glue and primer/UV Blocker/filler than Superflite (which is what ships with the covering kit). The glue has a very faint odor and cleans up with water pretty well if it is still wet. This means you could glue fabric almost anywhere. It took some figuring out the first day. I’m the first brave soul around my local airport to try this stuff so I read the books, watched the videos and set out to give it a go. I had some help from an airport guy who uses Polyfiber. The biggest adjustment for him was letting the glue dry on the frame itself. Stewart Systems has you apply glue to the frame and then let it dry. It then becomes tacky and you can lay the fabric onto the glue and it will stick, but not enough to keep you from removing it. This means that in theory, you shouldn’t have to work with wet glue while trying to get the fabric to lay down.

Once the fabric is where you want it, you run a 250 degree iron down the center of the tube to cement it into place. This is a pretty strong bond and gets the fabric ready to be glued the final time. The last step is to brush a coat of glue on top of the bonded area to completely soak the fabric creating the actual bond. You wipe the excess glue off with a shop towel to make everything pretty down the road.

Maria has been excited about the covering process so after I felt comfortable enough, we brought the pieces to the house to start working on the rivets, patches, and tapes. We brought it up to the kitchen table and got to work. I got a neat timelapse (at least I think it is) of our work last night and I’ve also got some pictures of the before stages. I’m working on getting a more complete picture timeline on the next piece.

(3 h Fuselage; 10 h Covering)

[youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jxTGnl9YkFE&w=560&h=315]

Riveting and covering on the kitchen table

The progression

By Ryan

On December 10, 2015

In S-20

Continuing to work on the fuselage. The big tasks lately are the seats, forward baggage compartment, and beginning the work on the boot cowl.

I have the seat frames built and one has been finished. I messed up the seat rail block that goes on the bottom seat frame, so I’m waiting on an additional one from RANS. I took a look at the updates they made to the seat system and I like the new one better. But, they don’t seem to have problems with the previous one, so I can’t be too fussy. The new style has the adjustment pieces on both fuselage tubes. That was the biggest thing I liked.

I pretty much have the forward baggage compartment finished now. I need to install the nut plates.

I started working on the boot cowl. The first item of business was fitting up the firewall. This was pretty straight forward. I would definitely have a good drill bit since the firewall is some pretty tough stuff. I was using a wood block held in my hand to hold the firewall against the fuselage while I was drilling. Well on one of my last holes I was drilling I was reflecting on how much it would hurt to find your hand with a drill bit and how I hoped I was holding the block in the right place. Wouldn’t you know I was slightly off. That resulted in a decent little injury to my palm. I’ll spare the pictures. It didn’t look too bad anyway without all the blood. It was only a #30 drill bit. I don’t do well with blood so I had to sit outside and cool off while not thinking about what I had done (which is impossible). That reset the injury free work days; 8 months was a good stretch.

In other exciting news, I’m planning on covering an aileron this weekend. I decided to switch over to Stewart Systems for the aircraft covering. The paint is still pretty hazardous, but the glue is much better to work with at the house.

I’ll get some pictures up soon.

(13 h)

Fuselage Work

By Ryan

On November 24, 2015

In S-20

I haven’t posted an update in a while for a lack of pictures. We’ve been making somewhat steady progress.

The first thing was to attach various stringers to the Fuselage to provide a shape for the fabric covering. This wasn’t hard, but was somewhat tedious and I spent a few days working on it a little at a time. I did have one screw up which I’m thinking will be an easy fix. The stringer that is on the top of the fuselage from the tail to the aft of the cabin didn’t stay flush with the tube from the vertical stabilizer. So I have a small gap at that spot, but I think I will be able to just put some filler in the gap and smooth it out and not worry about much. The rest of the stingers were pretty straightforward. My fuselage is powder coated, so I had to remove the powder coating so I could slip the stringers on.

The next task was to attach some antenna mount plates and fit up the floor board. The antenna plates were simple and went out without much trouble. The floorboard fits right in, but you do have to cut out part of the flange on the left and right side of the floor board where it interferes with cross tubes in the frame. I also had to remove some material on the aft of the floorboard to make space for some welds. All in all it was easy to do.

After the floorboard was able to sit flat, I had to drill out the floorboard where it contacted some tabs in the fuselage. The size varied, so it’s important to double check everything. Once they were all drilled, I attached nut plates to some of the tabs. Some of them already had holes for the rivets, but a few I had ti drill out myself.

My next task was attaching the baggage window trim panel on the outside of the fuselage. The manual has you make sure everything is lined up and equal and then drill holes into the trim panel through the mounting tabs on the fuselage.

One of the areas I’m working on now is the baggage compartment. This caused me a little heartache in the beginning because I just couldn’t get everything lined up right. First, I assembled the aft compartment outside of the fuselage and drilled the three holes in the aft corners as called out by the manual. I then placed it in the plane and attempted to get it to fix. We couldn’t get it to sit flat against the cross tube and we gave up for the evening to talk with Ed at RANS. After talking with Ed, I loosened up the tape holding stuff together and I also removed the clecos. What I figured out was that the back of the baggage compartment has two pre drilled holes at the top corners. This corresponds to the tabs in the fuselage. This helped set where everything else would go. I then started getting the floor and sides in place. I did remove some material of the baggage compartment floor because it didn’t seem like it would fit right. I still think I had too much material, but it looks fine. (Note: RANS says everything should be an exact fit and you shouldn’t have to remove any material.) I got all the sides to line up about halfway on the tubes and then taped it all up like a mad man. The holes I previously drilled in the aft corners lined up at this point so I clecoed them back together. Then I started to drill holes through the tabs and into the baggage compartment, clecoing as I went. After I got all the holes drilled and clecoed I started to cut the stiffeners to size and locating all the holes along them. You do have to modify the flanges in certain spots to avoid some fuselage tubes. Like other things on the fuselage, it’s not hard to do, just a little tedious. The wing is pretty cut and dry so it spoils a novice builder :-).

I still have the forward baggage compartment to make, but I hope to get that done in the next few days.

The other current project is building up the seats. RANS sells a very complete kit. I have all the upholstery so they will be done done when I get it done.

Maria has been helping a lot with the seats and we should have them finished by Thanksgiving. We have the seat assemblies completes and we are working on sizing the seat internal tube. We stopped at this point the other day because I wanted to clarify it’s purpose. It serves as a sort of anti-crush bushing. The seat frame tube is under bent and when you start attaching the cushions, it bends the frame in. The seat internal tube helps maintain the proper spacing so it sits correctly on the fuselage tubes. One thing we thought would make life easy is to assemble the tangs and bearings and hold it all together with a 1/4″ bolt while you rivet the tangs to the seat frame. If you don’t, then the best way we found was to assemble the bearings and washer one at a time while inserting the bolt. Then remove the bolt to attach the seat back frame. Fun stuff.

Finally, here are some pictures of everything as it stands today. It’s really starting to look like a plane now!

(25 h)