Tag: S-20 Page 3 of 5

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)

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.

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)

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)