Tag: S-20 Page 4 of 5

The saga continues…

On September 4, 2015

It’s been forever since I have put up and update. I haven’t had a lot of stuff happening, so I waited until I got some substantial work done.

I’m at the point where I am attaching the metal skins to the root area of the wing and leading edge. This has taken a while due to various reasons. The tip wrap was confusing, but simple once you get it on and see what it should look like. That’s why I included copious pictures in the hope that someone may find it easier than me the first time around. The bottom root skin was final installed and lines were marked on the spars for where the anodizing needed to be removed so the sheet metal can be glued down.

I had a misunderstanding with what the tape on the rib to wrap contact area was for. That led to a call down to the factory where I’m sure they look forward to my very technical questions haha. So the foam tape is to smooth out the area so the edges of the areas that were fluted don’t deform the leading edge wrap. The first tape I had was heavey duty, but not very foamy. RANS mentioned that they have recently been using the kind of foam tape you use for poster boards. So, that was the answer and we’ll find out in a year or so if that works :-). Next step was removing the anodizing. I had a hard time figuring out the best way to do this. I’ll await the screams of horror, but in the end I put a flexible 80-grit sanding brush on the dremel and was very careful about how long I spent in areas. I don’t think it should cause any ill-effects and there doesn’t seem to be any deep cuts from staying too long in one area.

One issue that had me worried was that I had a few rivets that didn’t pull tight in the leading edge wrap stringer. They were loose enough to turn and move around. Not sure why that happened. In the process of drilling one out, it enlarged the whole. On the recommendation from another airplane person, I put a washer on the stringer side and called it good. Another issue with the wrap is that there were two areas in between ribs that exhibited “oil-canning.” I called RANS and was told that I could put an extra stringer in there and that should do it. Again, not sure why this happened. (Note: I decided to forgo this as it seems that some loose rivets were contributing to the issue.)

Something that I couldn’t find in the text or just missed was a hole on the forward part of the upper root skin. There is a hole on each side that must be transferred on the 1st and 2nd rib as well as the leading edge wrap. This may have been obvious, but since RANS does an awesome job with making my life easy, I didn’t want to just drill a hole that I couldn’t find reference to.

Another task somewhat completed was the fuel cap assembly. I got it attached although I’m going to wait to break open my fancy DOW 730 sealant until the other wing is ready. Then I will sell it (maybe) and make $10’s of dollars (maybe).

On a somewhat related note, the group I was in that owned a Cessna 140 and a Cub recently dissolved and the planes have been sold. A recent endeavor to go back to school while working and building a plane should take up most of time though. I’m still instructing and part of a club, so I will still have some airplane access although not as cheap. So ends the first chapter of pseudo airplane ownership.

(10 h)

Update with little work

By Ryan

On July 28, 2015

In S-20

It’s been a crazy summer for us. Decided to go back to school in May and that picked up in July making this month a bust. So it’s probably only been a few hours between June and July.

I did make an interesting discovery that has added about 1.5 hours of work to the project. My impeccable timing meant that I figured out the hole where the bolt goes to attach the forward spar to the fuselage was not straight enough. After a quick email to RANS the fix is to replace the inside and outside doublers to get a fresh start. This would have been a somewhat simple process if I had caught it earlier. It’s not too bad now, just annoying. The process meant removing the root rib and clip, removing the fuel tank, remove the forward bolt on the compression tube, and removing the rivets holding the doubler in. This took about 40 minutes since I was taking it slow. Waiting on the parts from RANS to get everything reinstalled.

We both were able to go up to Oshkosh for a day. This meant Maria got to sit and look over the plane. She seemed excited about it and I imagine relieved that it was actually possible to get an airplane from a box. Got to look at engines and start to dream about some avionics. It’s pretty neat what’s out there for experimentals at a pretty reduced cost compared to the certified world.

Until next time.

(2 h)

Miscellaneous wing stuff

By Ryan

On June 7, 2015

In S-20

Today capped off a few tasks I was doing over the past week. First was some work with the the fuel cap assembly. I modified the retainer that goes in the fuel tank and the fuel cap assembly to a #11. I also modified a few other parts for the assembly and then fitted them together with the cap assembly in order to transfer drill through them. I still need to drill the hole for the fuel vent because I didn’t have a 25/64″ drill bit. Once that is done, the cap assembly will be pretty much ready for the final installation.

The next big step was finally getting all the stringers and ribs riveted. I had been waiting to do this because I did not have the parts to do the aileron bell crank. Some aileron cables were not formed correctly from the factory, so I’m waiting to get the correct ones before I rivet in the root rib. Once that is riveted in, I can get the rest of the fuel tank fittings installed and start working on the leading edge skins. I did make some mistakes here that I don’t think will be an issue. The leading edge rib clips had called for AN-42 rivets and the trailing edge called for AN-43’s. In some lapse of understanding I used AN-43’s on the leading edge clips as well. I realized it once I saw how few AN-43 rivets were left and the fact that I still had a whole other wing to do. The 43’s are longer than the 42’s and that appears to be the only difference.

Getting closer every day,

(4 h)

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)

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)

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)

Picking up the kit!

By Ryan

On March 30, 2015

In S-20

The time has finally arrived. Myself and Chris (a friend) left Iowa City this past Thursday (26MAR) and began our journey to RANS. We stopped about halfway in Lawrence, KS. The next morning we headed out for the final stretch to Hays and arrived right around 11AM. We had a great time meeting some of the folks at RANS and Randy (the owner). Randy showed us around and we got a demo flight in the factory’s S-20. It flew great and I’m excited about getting it built.

Loading the crate onto the trailer was not a big issue. The trailer was only slightly below the loading dock and we were able to just push it onto the trailer with a fork lift. I don’t think it could have been any easier. After loading it up we headed out for some lunch and returned to strap the crate down to the trailer. After checking everything over we launched off back towards Iowa City. We left Hays around 2:30PM and arrived back in Iowa City around 12:15 AM the next morning. This included 2 stops for food and fuel. Overall it was a very long drive in a short timeframe, but it was more than worth it to visit RANS, get a flight in the S-20, and meet the folks at RANS.

For the trip totals, we drove around 1,140 miles from 6PM Thursday to 12:15 AM Saturday morning and about 82 gallons of gas.