tailwheels

Unintended Adventures

Tag: Covering Page 1 of 2

School’s out for summer

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On June 4, 2017

In S-20

Finally moved in back at the real house and classes are done for the Spring semester. Three more semesters left before I can be a real boy again.

I finished the other half of the stabilizer I started covering 4 weeks ago, so now I just need to cover the elevators and then I can start working on the tapes and the patches. I don’t mind tapes and patches since they seem to go much quicker than covering entire pieces.

(Everything above this was written a month ago when I thought I was ready to push out an update. Everything below is a collection of stuff I have done since then.)

Today is the culmination of a task that has taken us nearly 1.5 years. The actual time from the cracking the first bottle of glue open to getting everything ready to get to the paint shop was one year, five months, and twenty-one days. I started in December 2015 and finished today, June 2017. I never envisioned it taking this long, but When I started I was still at home, taking classes at the local community college. No more than 3 weeks after I started covering is when I went back to the big university to begin the Aerospace Engineering journey. It was hard to work on it during the school months since covering takes quite a bit of set-up and clean-up. It’s hard to just do an hour of covering because not a lot really gets done.

So, this past week my wife and I had a week off from work and my busy intern life to relax and catch up on everything we have been putting off for the past nine months. We thankfully got to work a lot on the plane and put in probably 50 man hours over the week to get the covering finished. It was a long process, but it was awesome to get that chapter closed this past week. It has been an open task for so long that I thought we would never get done with it. I enjoy covering and there is an artistic aspect to it which is nice, but I think I will need to space out my covering projects by at least a couple of years :-).

On to the details. Most of the work we had to do was putting patches and tapes onto pieces we had already covered. The only pieces that weren’t completely covered were the elevators. I ran short of fabric again and had to order another two yards. In the end I had to order an additional eight yards of fabric on top of the fabric I received from RANS. Come of this I know I would have needed regardless, but some of the extra fabric probably would’ve been avoided with more careful planning and layout of the parts.  On the flip side, the fabric is relatively cheap and probably a lot less stress than coming up short after thinking you laid out the piece properly.

I’ll list a few things I noticed while covering that may be of some interest to others embarking on this journey.

Since it is what we did last, I’ll start with the elevators. These weren’t hard, they just had a lot of sides and two curved edges that made things a little interesting. For the curved edges, my only advice is when laying down the fabric, make sure you have a decent bit of excess so you have enough to shrink the fabric to make the curve look pretty without and wrinkles. Mine are pretty ragged because it took me a while to get my technique down, but I wasn’t planning on winning any show awards. I started shrinking at the middle of the curve and then worked my way outwards. For the tapes in these areas, I tacked the tape down on one side of the curve and the pulled the tape from the other end to get the tape to follow the curve better and it helped to get the tape to lay down along the curve. I then tacked the middle of the tape down along the entire curve. After that, I started shrinking the tape from the outside of the curve and worked my way to the middle while alternating on each side of the curve. This is what seemed to work best for me, but maybe you’ve got a better idea on how to do it?

The last trick to the elevators is the stitching. It’s all straight forward except the stitch that is only on one side of the elevator since the bottom side has a plastic exit ring for the trim servo. I put the bottom fabric piece on and then the top piece of fabric on so the top would look better. If you do that, the stitch becomes a little difficult. The problem is that the tube you are stitching around is about the total amount of space between the 2 layers of fabric. I didn’t have a fancy curved needle that could make that bend, so we improvised. I did put a slight bend in my needle for the process to help aid it. First I went through the top of the fabric and out the bottom inside the trim servo exit ring. Then after I pulled the needle out of the bottom, I went back through the same hole and then out the other side of the plastic ext ring still on the bottom side. Then I pulled the needle completely through that hole and then sent the needle back through that hole to pierce through the top layer of fabric in line with the other top side hole but on the opposite side of the tube we are trying to stitch. I didn’t care about the hole inside the exit ring since we will cut that out. The other hole I made in the bottom part of the fabric wasn’t bad, but I put a tiny circular patch over it anyway to feel good. It worked great even though it was sort of round-a-bout. If anyone has another way they did it, I’d like to hear it.

The other pieces didn’t prove to be too much of an issue. I didn’t shrink the door fabric much past 250 (except where I had wrinkles), but ironing the tape edges and patch edges did shrink it a little more than I initially did, so we will see soon enough if that means I get the opportunity to make new door trim pieces (YAY!).

If anyone has any questions about the covering process, feel free to reach out to me. I’m not an expert, but I probably have made most of the mistakes you could make for a first-time covering. In case anyone is only reading this post, we used the Stewart Systems covering products. I’ve enjoyed them and I haven’t had to wear a respirator and I did a lot of covering on the kitchen table during the winter.

So what’s next? I’ll kick off the painting process this coming week and if I don’t slack off and don’t upset the person helping me paint, I hope to have them done by the end of June (that’s my hope 🙂 ).

I need to definitely get them done before July as we will be moving and I’ll lose access to the folks who have been helping me a lot with the plane over the past two years. I did find a hangar after a few hiccups with the local airport. It’ll be an hour drive away, but it was better than the storage unit alternative.

I probably won’t have too much to report on the next month since I’ll be focused on trying to get the paint on, but I’ll try to get some pictures and a quick update on what they look like throughout the process.

Hope to see some folks at Oshkosh this year!

(80 h)

 

So much covering

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On March 11, 2017

In S-20

I enjoy covering, but it is very tedious and takes a long time to accomplish simple tasks.

In my journey to finish the covering of the airplane I have successfully gotten the rudder and doors ready for patches and tapes. This leaves me with two flaps, two elevators, and a horizontal stabilizer left before I can start on the tapes and patches.

It’s getting closer. I wish there was more to say, but as with the other covering stuff it’s really just a time intensive job.

I’m making good progress n my engine monitor project and I suggest you check out my updates on ransclan.com.

(10 h)

 

Wings are covered!

By

On January 4, 2017

In S-20

I’ve been meaning to push out an update for a while, but decided to wait till I had the wings done.

The wings are now out of the garage and waiting for paint. They have the brushed in EkoFill, so all that will be left to do is sand and paint.

That meant that we got to move the fuselage back into the garage and think about putting stuff together. I still need to cover all the control surfaces except for ailerons and one stabilizer, but I wanted a break from all the covering.

The fuselage looks pretty awesome sitting in the garage and it makes it feel like progress is being made.

A few of the things on my list are:

  • Installing the header tank
  • Removing overspray on powdercoat (so far 0000 steel wool is working great. It scratches the powder coat, but I’m going to try some polishing compounds and see what happens. Either way it looks better than with the overspray on it)
  • Painting the interior (going to be rolling on Stewart System’s paint and see how we make out.)
  • Painting the gear legs and tailwheel spring
  • Install gear legs once painted
  • Finish up some seat work (I have a few things left to do since I went with the new style seat rails)
  • Start working on the floorboard
  • Maybe something else

I’ve got quite a bit to keep me occupied and at least give me something else to do while I work up the desire to cover some more. 🙂

I also get to use something other than brushes and scissors for the first time in 8 months!

(20 h)
 

I am still building an airplane

By

On December 5, 2016

In S-20

It’s always sad when I don’t get a lot of updates posted about progress to the airplane. This semester has been pretty busy.

This is a catch all for all the work we’ve put into the plane since the last update (sometime in October). (Later realized I had a draft from Nov 18, so there may be some overlap here, but I’ll post both of them.)

The right wing has been covered, taped, and patched. It is now ready for paint.

Nothing too exciting else to report there. The process is similar to all the other covering with the exceptions of a few spots that I mentioned in a previous post. I did have the same issues around the tip bow, but this time I only had to use one patch to cover my mess!

The right wing is now covered and riveted. It is ready for tapes, exit rings, and patches. I applied a few things I learned on the right wing to help myself out a bit. The biggest one was the light coat of glue applied to all the sheet metal. This time I thinned down the EkoBond a good bit and brushed it on with a foam brush. This eliminated the bubbles completely and was thin enough not to leave any ridges. As a note, I did babysit it while it was drying since it would tend to get some ridges in it. I would just go back over it and brush it down again and by the time everything had dried I had successfully avoided any problems.

These differences in the wings are annoying, but I figure it’s a good teaching moment if anyone ever call me out on it. Of course I will vehemently deny any sub par covering for a few weeks and then I will give up and discuss it. Maybe EAA can give out awards for the most improvement shown over an airplane build at Oshkosh. Maybe an aluminum, copper, or tin Lindy?

One thing that I really wanted to reiterate is how awesome covering is with a second person. This wing went smoother and it was a lot less of a headache with some extra hands. Placing the plastic strips and tape on the ribs was much faster when I wasn’t trying to hold everything, cut things, and not drop scissor onto my nice fabric while I was working by myself.

(30 h)

Busy Fall

By

On December 5, 2016

In S-20

The airplane is still progressing. I voted to work on the plane vs. write an update after each work period.

Since the last plane update, the right wing has had all patches, tapes, and exit rings attached. In addition, the brushed on coat of EkoFill was applied.

The next step is to get the left wing mounted and prepped to cover. This will entail cleaning all the dust and bugs off the frame, applying anti-chafe tape to sharp edges, and getting the fuel cap screws sealed up. Then we will get it mounted into the rotating stand and get to covering.

A few things that I found from last time will hopefully make this wing go better. First is the coat of glue applied to the root skins and the leading edge skin. On the right wing I used a normal brush and I got a lot of bubbles and streaks. This will definitely show through the paint, but I wasn’t too concerned with it since I think it will not detract from the look overall. My options for the left wing are thinning the EkoBond down, using a different brush, or forgoing the coat of glue all together (need to call Stewart’s on this one). Hopefully that will eliminate the bubbles.

The engine monitor project is coming along pretty well. Not much to show at the moment since I’m just coding (very slowly due to a lot of work and school), but I’ve started adapting a configuration file so the limits of the gauges will be configurable. My coding as of now is geared towards the Rotax 912ULS, but I’m trying to keep it as configurable as I can where it is somewhat simple. If this thing keeps moving on and someone else wants to use it with another engine, then I figure we can cross that bridge then. I did find a new source for a lot of bright, industrial screens. They are pricier than the other outlets I found and the smallest screen seems to be 8.4″. Not a deal breaker overall, but I don’t know if an engine monitor needs to be 8″. I found a 6.5″ screen for around $140. It’s not the brightest, but it is close to the requirements I had decided on and some of the soaring community are using it with apparently good results.

(12 h)

Riveting

By

On October 13, 2016

In S-20

Little late, but wanted to get a short note written to just stay on top of the log.

Last weekend was devoted to getting the fabric on the right wing riveted down. I thought it would be fairly quick, but as usual it was not. Nothing hard for this part, but just a lot of repetition. The plastic strips all laid down nicely and seemed to go better than when I was using the strips on the horizontal stabilizer.

Maria helped out with the riveting and we got it done pretty quick. It was a quick work day, but now we’re all set to start adding exit rings, patches, and tapes.

On an aside, I have started on a side project to attempt some simple avionics. I really like the systems produced by Dynon and Garmin, but I’m haven’t been able to fully commit myself to one for this airplane. The information that I really am interested in is engine data and specifically temperatures. My idea is to use a popular micro controller (Arduino) to interface with the thermocouples and then display this data on a small screen. The end goal would be then to use the power of 3D printing to make a case for the system and be able to mount it in the panel.

I’ve looked into also using a small Linux computer (Raspberry Pi) in order to get access to nicer displays and graphics, but my lack of GUI programming has limited that area. I have a Raspberry Pi, so I may try to figure something out, but the Arduino is a relatively simple platform with a lot of community support for sensor applications.

If anyone reads this and has questions or has done this sort of thing shoot me an email. Should be a fun project and lower my desire for a full-blown glass cockpit. I’m going to add this stuff to the avionics page on the blog and try and track some progress there.

(5 h)

Covering the wings

By

On September 19, 2016

In S-20

My original plan was to start covering my wings in early August after Oshkosh and some other traveling. What that means is that I started covering the wings this past weekend.

Everything was pretty straight forward and it seemed easier to do than the fuselage. There was a lot less trimming around things.

The one thing I messed up and didn’t like was the top fabric. I tackled this alone which probably led to the problem. I had laid out the fabric in what looked like a nice, straight, and somewhat tight layout. I went ahead and attached the fabric to the trailing edge spar and then began on the leading edge. The problem showed itself when I got closer to the wing tip. I had a decent bunch of fabric on that end and I wasn’t sure what to do with it. I tried some creative cuts, but I probably did more harm than good. In the end after I shrunk everything, there is one spot that I don’t like and it is on the aft side of the wing and maybe a foot inboard of the tip bow. It’s just a big wrinkle that I don’t find pleasing, so I’m planning on making a small patch to put over it and tidy it up before laying the tapes down.

Other than that one misstep, I think it went pretty good. Between going away during the week for school and some weekend activities for the next two weekends, it will sit untouched till the second weekend of October. Next on the agenda is to get all the riveting done on the fabric before laying out patches and tapes.

(11 h)

It is done! (part of it)

By

On July 5, 2016

In S-20

The day has finally arrived where the fuselage is completely covered in fabric and ready for paint. I thought for sure it wouldn’t take 3 weeks since my last update, but summer seems to extend all timelines.

The objective is to move the fuselage this afternoon to get ready for paint and then hopefully start painting in the next week or so. We shall see how that timeline works out.

I was trying to think of some helpful covering hints or tips for the fuselage and can;t find anything groundbreaking except for the patches that go on the rear of the door frame. RANS instructs you to place patches and then tapes, but this is one area where I think they want you to put the patches on after you place the tapes. I did not and I don’t think it’s a huge problem, but I think it would look cleaner.

The areas in question are where other tapes start/end. A patch over the top of these tapes would finish those junctions off very nicely and then you would place the tape that goes around the door frame over that patch.

The other was a recommendation from another S-20 builder to use some bias tape for the vertical stabilizer transition area. That worked out great and I would recommend it.

I’m going to finish a horizontal stabilizer, aileron, and maybe cover the doors to get a few pieces to get my painting skills adjusted.

(16 h)

It’s neverending

By

On June 15, 2016

In S-20

Still slugging my way though the fuselage covering. All the work has been more sporadic than I would have liked.

The current state of the fuselage is that all the patches are on and I’m maybe halfway through the tapes.

Nothing too remarkable to report for this, so if there are any questions or suggestions, bring them up.

On another note, I received my first batch of painting supplies from Stewart Systems. I’m going to try and attempt a RANS scheme that was on the first SLSA. I;m going to replace the orange with Stewart’s Firethorn Red.

I’m also still learning the best way to put on patches and tapes with the glue. My technique has improved a lot and I think I may be able to go back with some diluted glue and soak it into the spots that aren’t a consistent color. 

(12 h)

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)

 

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