Ryan, Author at tailwheels

Aileron Bellcrank

On June 3, 2015

Finally got a backordered part I needed to assemble the aileron bellcrank. I was waiting to finish this before moving on with the wing so I didn’t get too far ahead of myself. It was pretty straight forward. I had an issue with getting the bearings into the mounting blocks. I spent an hour and a half getting one in and then gave up on the other one since it was getting late. The next day I asked around and found that these are much easier to do with something like a vice. Since I had no vice, I went out and bought one. I also needed it to clamp the bellcrank together so I could drill some holes through it.

Then I bolted it to the bellcrank brace in the wing. I over torqued the nuts the first go around and the arm didn’t move freely at all. I figured out what I did wrong and on went new hardware and it’s all working nicely now.

I torqued all the other nuts in the wing and I’m waiting on some new aileron cables from RANS so I can finish the bellcrank installation and move forward. I also need to rivet the rib reinforcement to the rib as well.

Since the bellcrank is installed now, I riveted the stringers in and started on riveting the ribs.

(6 hr)

Fuel Tank Fittings

By Ryan

On May 21, 2015

In S-20

Started putting in the fuel fittings to the tank. It probably goes quicker for those who know what they’re doing. I did figure out I can fit my hand through the cap opening so I could hold the upper fitting with the allen wrench while I tightened the nut down. This made the upper fitting much easier to install. The others were pretty straight forward.

(1 h)

More fuel tank work

By Ryan

On May 18, 2015

In S-20

This is a little dated since we were on vacation for the past week and a half, but I wanted to keep the record accurate. I spent the weekend getting the holes drilled in the left fuel tank to get ready to install the fittings.

I was nervous about drilling all the holes in the tank because it would be expensive to replace, but so far it all looks good. I also had to fit some skins so I could mark the point for the hole on the top of the tank. That included dimpling and riveting stiffeners to the root skins. All of that was more time consuming than hard.

Looking forward to getting back at it and moving forward with the left wing.

(6 h)

Fuel tank

By Ryan

On April 27, 2015

In S-20

Did a little work this evening and got the brace installed for the fuel tank and got the tabs that hold the fuel tank down bolted to the tank. Decided not to start drilling them as it would have taken longer than I had. Either way it’s looking better everyday.

(1.5 h)

It’s a wing!

By Ryan

On April 26, 2015

In S-20

This weekend was fun because me and Maria got to work on the plane and we got to get the ribs in. That makes it feel like a real wing to me even though there is still a ways to go.

First, I had to straighten the ribs with fluting pliers. Fluting pliers allow you to make indentations in a piece of sheet metal that will make the length shorter and hopefully straighten the parts where you do it. I am only working on one wing at a time and that meant I had 12 ribs to straighten. I probably spent too much time on it and even then, they didn’t seem perfect. I figured it was close enough and called it done.

The ribs have attach clips that are riveted to the ribs. These clips allow you to rivet the ribs to the spar. RANS recommends priming the area where the clip and rib mates, so that’s what I did. I primed the wrong sides of the ribs, so I got to do it all a second time when it came time to read everything again. I used a self-etching primer made by Duplicolor. I have read quite a few forums that seemed to believe in the stuff enough for me to use it. When they were primed, I modified a few ribs that required grommets to be installed.

The next step was to rivet clips for two of the ribs to the spar and then rivet the rest of the clips to the ribs themselves. NOTE: THE RIB CLIPS FOR THE TIP RIB WERE MISLABELED. I saw this note from another builder and it was true for me as well, so if anyone reads this thing, double check the clips. After the clips were riveted in, we started to cleco the ribs in place. This required loosening the drag braces to install the ribs. As we got to the outer ribs we noticed that the spars were too far away. This happened because the tip bow is underbent and is pushing out on the spar. I used some ratcheting straps to slightly pull them together so I could cleco in the ribs.

After that was done (and the next day), I had to rivet the tip rib to the tip bow. This took a lot of work because it just didn’t seem to want to be there. I finally got it in there and got on to the next objective which was to install stringers through the ribs.

The stringers are installed on the upper and lower parts of the ribs. I got them through the ribs and then cleco’d them in place. I called it a day after that because I am waiting on parts for the bellcrank and I’m not sure how far I can go without that installed.

Once I get that figured out, it will be getting the fuel tank installed. If you read this and there aren’t any pictures, check back in a day or so and they’ll be here!

(8 hrs)

Assembling the left wing frame

By Ryan

On April 20, 2015

In S-20

Worked for about an hour on Sunday and about 4 hours on Monday to get moving along with assembling the wing frame.

First off was to assemble an aileron cable rub block. This is where the aileron cables will go and will avoid fraying or rubbing anything that would cause damage. The block had to be countersunk to make room for the rivet heads. I tried using the drill and that worked a little too good and settled for going slow by hand.

After that, it was time to start installing the compression tubes and drag brace tubes. This was pretty straight forward and it was all a bunch of bolting together.

After those were installed it was time to install and assemble the aileron bell crank brace. This had two pieces that were riveted to the trailing edge spar. This took a while because there were a good bit of holes to drill and rivets to pull. Overall is wasn’t that bad.

The last thing I accomplished today (Monday) was installing the wing tip bow. There wasn’t much to this part and it went pretty quick. I also drilled out a hole so the wing can be attached to a rotator when it comes time for painting and covering.

Finally starting to look like a wing. I have a few more things to accomplish and then it will be on to installing the ribs.

(5 hrs)

More work on the left wing

By Ryan

On April 20, 2015

In S-20

My work on the plane is usually sporadic and not too much happens, so I decided to sum up the weekend in one post.

It started last Thursday when I drilled out the holes in the strut attach plate to the proper size up at the airport where there is a drill press. Once I had those ready it was time to start drilling into the left spars to attach the plates. I got all the holes drilled in the spars on Thursday and called it a night.

On Saturday, I had some friends come over to provide some assistance and just take a look at the project. It’s not very exciting at the moment. I always learn something when people see me working on stuff which is a good thing. On Saturday we got the strut attach plates all bolted and torqued to the left wing.

With the strut attach plates mounted, it was time to attach some nut plates for the flaps and then embark on a somewhat ambiguous and long journey of installing the trailing edge spar root fittings. It’s mostly ambiguous and long because of my lack of experience in light airplane construction. It turned out to not be that bad, and it was rewarding to have it all finished. The fitting is where the trailing edge of the wing will attach to the fuselage and I figure it’s pretty important. The inside of the trailing edge spar is not round. This coupled with the fact that the holes were slightly misaligned meant I had to grind some material off of the root fitting so it would fit into the spar at the hole locations. I also installed some bushings into the root fitting which were alsod ground to fit the inside of the spar. A long wing channel also had to be mounted to the outside of the trailing edge spar in the same spot as the root fitting. The channel has a stainless steel rivet in the center hole (which is only shown on the wing diagram and not the root fitting assembly) and then two bolts on the outside holes. The hole closest to the root of the spar has a nut plate the has two aluminum rivets and the farthest hole uses a shear nut. This was a time consuming process for me and I took about 4 hours to get it all bolted up. The nice thing is that the root fitting assembly means that I will begin to assemble the wing structure and I will have something to look at besides just two aluminum tubes.

Overall I got a lot of things accomplished I feel like. It will be fun to see the wing starting to take shape as well.

( 7 h )

Working on Right Wing

By Ryan

On April 8, 2015

In S-20

All the wing work up until now has been on the left wing. Tonight I started work on the right wing to try and start catching up to where I’m at on the left wing. I spent about an hour on it and got the plate riveted in.

(1 hr)

Starting the Wings

By Ryan

On April 6, 2015

In S-20

I’m going to be assembling the wings first. It starts out by attaching a few plates, channels, and doublers to the wing. Beefing it up in places and setting the attach points for the wing structure to be built on. Pretty straightforward but also unnerving to drill into a big tube of aluminum that would be fairly expensive to replace (I assume at least). This also is where I have screwed up my first part. I had hoped to prolong this occurrence for most of the build, but it happened. Luckily it is a small part.

Mine and Maria’s schedule finally matched up to work some on the plane and she got to drill a few holes and put some rivets in. We’ve still got some organizing to do, but it is all going together very nicely.

(3 h)

Kit Inventory

By Ryan

On April 1, 2015

In S-20

We arrived with the kit back in Iowa City just after midnight on Saturday (28MAR). At 10AM on Saturday we were tearing the crate open to start unpacking. The fuselage is being kept in a loft at the airport since our garage has no room for such things. RANS packed and crated everything exceptionally well and nothing seems to be damaged. It took a while to get the crate open, but once we did it was quick to get the fuselage unloaded and put away. After that, we set off towards the house to unload the rest of the kit.

After unloading we took a break for lunch and my father-in-law helped inventory the kit. The packing list was 17 pages long and it took us about one hour to inventory the large pieces and 2 hours to inventory one box that held a lot of smaller pieces. In all we were only missing two items. There are now airplane parts strategically placed in three different areas of the house.

Here are some pictures of the whole process.
(5 h)