Not much exciting things to show since the wings went on. It has been a lot of wiring to wrap up the avionics and also to get the engine wired up. But, that is coming to a potential end and I wanted to get something written down before the end of the year.
(If you’re reading this on the 31st of December 2018, there are no pictures because my iPhone doesn’t like to be below 30% battery when it is 32 deg F or below. I’ll get some photos tomorrow and add them to the post.)
The avionics wiring is complete. I will make the wire runs a little prettier, but all the wires go to what they need to go to and nothing exploded. The wiring for the engine is almost complete. Currently I am working on finishing the wiring for the ignition/mag switch which will complete my engine wiring.
Hoses on the engine have been a not so fun endeavor. The hoses that are giving me problems are the oil hoses and specifically the hose from the oil pump housing to the oil cooler. The provided hose does not lend itself to any sort of acceptable routing and I fussed with it over the course of a few weeks before giving it up. I will have to make my own hose for that run, but I have put it off to accomplish some other tasks I had put off previously. I’m not sure if it was in a previous update, but I fabricated a hose to go from the firewall bulkhead fuel fitting to the gascolator and installed the Rotax fuel hose to the gascolator. I still need to install the return line fuel hose and the fuel pump vent hose. I also will make a vent tube similar to the oil tank breather vent for the fuel pump vent.
I was fitting up the radiator duct a while ago and realized I needed to install the oil hoses which led to me figuring out the fun in the paragraph above, so it is currently waiting for me to finalize the hoses. Something that came up with another builder is making an access panel in the radiator duct so the oil hose at the bottom of the engine can be accessed without removing the duct. It sounds like a good idea and I need to get some aluminum to accomplish that.
Probably should have put this sooner, but I installed the oil tank mount brackets. These are what sort of cradle the oil tank and get riveted to the engine mount. I hope to never have to remove those rivets. The manual calls for the use of pan head screws, but I had a hard time tightening the nut on and replaced them with some hex head bolts which worked fine. One thing spotted by someone else was that the heads of the screws or bolts will touch the oil tank. By using some plastic edging material on the aluminum angles, the tank is offset enough to avoid this.
Another big item was finally diving into the header tank. I had put it off for a year and then bought an updated version from RANS and then put if off for another few months. I installed all the fittings into the tank, installed the mount for the new header tank. I also added a piece of aluminum angle to the read of the mount for added strength since the forward attach locations didn’t do much for the aft part of the tank and it will be relatively heavy with fuel in it. I also had to relocate the tank sump location. I marked it and then cut through the fabric. What I should have done is fabricated a new exit ring, glued it where I wanted the hole, and then cut the hole. Now I will fabricate the ring and glue it, but I probably could have gotten a better finish by doing it differently. I patched over the old opening with some extra fabric from cutting out some inspection cover holes. I still need to run the fuel lines from the wing tanks and to the firewall.
I final installed the flap lever. This was frustrating because somethings are off center and require some odd washer placement. There are also bushings to be fabricated and I don’t have a great way for getting those cut perfect, so I end up putting them on and taking them off a lot. In the end I added some washers as well because the right rod end would hit the fuselage frame when I tried to move it to the last detent. I added washers to center the cables better and avoided this. It is still close, so I may file some of it away to provide better clearance. The material that would be filed away is not a structural tube, so I think it will be safe to do.
Things that are up on the list are installing the jury struts, installing flap gap seal, rigging the wing (and control surfaces), finalizing the oil hose issue, installing fuel return/pump vent hoses, and finalizing the routing of wiring on the firewall forward side.
My engine monitor has also progressed quite a bit. I had thought my software was in a pretty good place and then I installed it into the panel and found some bugs in the data acquisition and sensor conversion code. I fixed those and now my only issue is not understanding how to auto start the application after booting and I need to integrate a real time clock into the board so it actually keeps track of the date and time. The latter should be the easier one to fix and I just placed an order for an updated PCB.
In related aerospace news, I am finally graduated from Iowa State with a B.S. in Aerospace Engineering! It was a crazy 3.5 years to get to this point and it took lot of hard work. A lot of thanks goes to Maria for agreeing and supporting more school. I also owe a lot to all the friends who shared the misery of engineering school and the large group projects that accompany it. It was a ton of fun to go back to school and intern with some exciting companies. I’m looking forward to a fun career.
I learned a lot of new stuff that has guided me toward some neat projects that I am hoping will turn into big things. I am really interested in manufacturing composites and hopefully some structural composites as well in addition to making parts from metals and plastics. I’d like to think I could make a business out of it at some point, but there is a lot of learning and tool acquisition required before that point. I have some neat ideas for upgrades to the RANS and also some standalone ideas, but they will have to wait till the RANS is actually flying.
(40 h)
