Tag: S-20 Page 2 of 5

Hooray for airplanes!

On February 13, 2017

Lots to cover in this update since I’ve been busy and haven’t written one in almost a month.

We’ve been steadily accomplishing fuselage tasks and it’s really taking shape.

All of the cabin flight controls have now been installed. I still need to tighten down the control stick nuts, but the cables and pullies are in as well as the elevator push pull tube assembly.

The rudder pedals are installed and temporarily attached to the rudder cables. The brakes have been installed with the hose fittings and I need to install a few more cotter pins. I also need to add the nut to the brake/toe pedal U-bracket. I’m not sure how much spacing needs to be on the brake cylinder rod, so I’m figuring that out this week. Once I get that done, I’ll install the brake lines and get my landing gear situation figured out. Maria built and installed all the pulley assemblies and installed the control stick torque tube.

On the topic of my landing gear, I’ve gone through a few phases on what I want to do to them. At first it was an obvious spray painting with the Stewart System’s paint. Then when that didn’t get done in time I moved to polishing them up and leaving them just bare aluminum. That has seemed somewhat of an elusive target and I haven’t tried it very much. I then cleaned up the landing gear legs with some steel wool and solvent/polishing compound and they looks pretty nice like that. So I decided that I will just clean them up and not polish them to a mirror like shine, but still leave them bare aluminum. In the middle of all of this I also thought about trying to roll on the Stewart System’s paint on the gear legs, which is where I’m at now. I want to get them final installed on the plane, so I’d like to decide and act on something soon, but I’ve said that for about 2 months now and I haven’t done anything. Stay tuned!

In other brake news, I had some friends over and we installed the bulkhead tee, reservoir, and the parking brake to the firewall, so the firewall is also now installed. I still have a few residual tasks to accomplish on the boot cowl, so I’ll probably do that once I’ve got my landing gear and brake line situation situated. Getting other people to work on the plane is always fun.

A fun task this past weekend was applying the vinyl N-numbers a local shop made for me. They look great and it really looks like an airplane with them on there. We had a lot of bubbles on one side which mainly happened because we didn’t really seek out the correct way to apply it until after we did the first one. The second one turned out much better after we watched a YouTube video :-). Really cool stuff!

My immediate plans for the upcoming 3 weekends is to take care of the final covering tasks. I still have flaps, elevators, rudder, and doors to cover so I can be ready for painting by the time it warms up. Hopefully it will go quicker with my now vast experience in aircraft covering haha. It’s been fun to use tools again though.

Lots of stuff still to go, but it is definitely an airplane now and the parts board is becoming a plain piece of plywood again.

For the Spring million-mile overview update, I hope to get the rest of the major painting done by the end of the summer (wings, control surfaces, doors) ad then start installing all of them in the fall in the hopes of having a proper looking airplane by the end of the year. We’ve got a move at the end of the summer, so we’ll see how this all plays out.

(25 h)

[wpvideo z3cFQ9Bg]

Covering the wings

By Ryan

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)

Plane’s new clothes

By Ryan

On September 19, 2016

In S-20

I never posted this draft of a post from a month ago, so here it is.

Finally it appears that the painting on the fuselage is mostly completely save for some touching up. We’ve learned a lot and it looks pretty awesome.

The colors are Insignia White, Battleship Gray, and Firethorn Red from Stewart Systems. The scheme came from RANS.

Few things from spraying EkoPoly Premium we found. The biggest one is make sure the booth is dry. It seems humidity played a large part in some of our more frustrating sessions. So make sure the air is dry in the line and in the booth. The nasty picture of a light coat of red below was what we ended up with in the beginning of putting the red on. A combination of drying the booth out more and increasing the tip pressure on the gun seemed to do the trick.

Next time I think I’ll try removing the tapes prior to the paint drying. Maybe that will allow me clean up the lines and make them better.

Either way, I’m a happy guy.

(10 h)

Sanding (Painting)

By Ryan

On August 12, 2016

In S-20

Took a while for an update, but Oshkosh and visiting family made for a pretty hectic end to July and beginning of August.

As of this writing, the fuselage has it’s white top coat complete. Now it’s time for masking and sanding in preparation for the second half that will be red. Not much else to report besides that.

The painting has been a learning curve, but it’s starting to come together. The biggest hurdle is the time between spraying products. Usually means waiting a day and when you’re just painting one part, it seems like eternity.

I haven’t tracked my hours very closely in this section of work, but I’ll make a guess about what it seems like it has been.

Hope to have pictures of the plane with red on it by the end of next week. Till then, here are some of the white. We did get orange peel in the finish, but I’m satisfied with how it turned out and I have a feeling it will fly just fine.

(30 h)

It’s getting serious

By Ryan

On July 21, 2016

In S-20

Last update prior to Oshkosh.

Fuselage is ready for a light sanding followed by the topcoat colors after I get back from my summer tour in a week and a half or so.

I’m also finishing up my wing rack build today and tomorrow so I can transport/store the wings more compactly.

See you at OSH!

(6 h)

Sanding

By Ryan

On July 19, 2016

In S-20

The painting process is in full swing at the moment. Between life obligations and other flying obligations, it takes forever to get anything done, but it is getting done.

Currently we have a horizontal stabilizer and fuselage that has all the coats of EkoFill on it and is ready for EkoPrime. Took a decent amount of trial and error to get everything working right and we did a good bit of sanding to get some runs out.

Brushing the EkoFill on the fuselage took a good 4 hours give or take 30 minutes.

The EkoPrime should be on this week and then we can start shooting color (EkoPoly) the next day. I’m not sure when this will happen. I’d like to say this week too, but we’re closing in on Oshkosh and I’ve got other things to take care of before the end of the week.

In somewhat unrelated news, I’m building a wing rack so I can transport my two wings and store them easier.

(20 h)

It is done! (part of it)

By Ryan

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)

So that’s what it looks like

By Ryan

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 Ryan

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 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)