Here is progress as of November 24 (Thanksgiving Day)
New Home (2)
Here is the basement rough-in from November 18.
New Home
The construction of airplane parts will be taking a back seat to new home construction. One benefit of the new domicile will be a 25′ x 30′ heated/cooled basement workspace. Excellent!
All the initial paperwork has been completed. Now the build is underway. My direct involvement will not occur for another few months.
Cabin Cover (2)
I had another forced pause from the shop due to business travel overseas. This weekend was getting back in action with Eric’s help on further cutting, fitting and sanding the fiberglass cabin cover.
The door bottom needs extensive trimming to get to the proper thickness.
Left and right sides need to be notched to accommodate the bulkhead reinforcements at the bottom. Notice the degree of relief needed to make this fit.
The inner section must line up just right with the mid-skin longerons. Too much taken off will decrease strength for the connecting rivets. Too little and the fiberglass bottoms out on the longeron and fit will not be proper.
First reduction was with a fiberglass cutting wheel on a Dremel tool, followed by a belt sander, hand file and finally Great Lakes 22″ sanding block with 120 grit paper.
Fit, trim and refit is the process here. Getting the cabin cover to slide in without too much material removed takes time and patience. On the right photo the 3/4″ offset for windshield and doors are being highlighted with a Sharpie.
Trim the windshield flange…
Clamp the rear door pillar and bottom flange in place. Then start the match drilling of the cabin cover to the top tailcone skin.
Eric pushes up on the cabin cover fiberglass while I drill #30 holes down through the tailcone skin. This process will continue on around the whole baggage bulkhead area.
Wingtips / Lights (2)
Continuing with the wingtip preparations…
This shows the #4 nutplates for the navigation and strobes being riveted into place. I used stainless steel and countersunk Cherry nutplate rivets, which are expressly designed for the purpose. A standard hand riveter can be used, no need for the specialized and expensive Cherry puller(s).
A #4 screw fastens the bracket which will hold the nav/strobe housing.
Here the nav/strobe housing is shown in final configuration.
Here are the nutplate insertions (outside and inside) for holding the lenses in place. Next up is final AwlFair application, sanding and priming.
Cabin Cover (1)
The weather forecast called for beautiful skies and temperatures over the weekend, so I enlisted Eric’s assistance in starting to trim and fit the cabin cover to the fuselage. The idea is get everything aligned properly, then finish the interior metal painting. This way scratches produced during the fitting process will be reduced.
Faint scribe lines are on the fiberglass mold from the factory, but difficult to see under most conditions. I added electrical tape along the edge for a better visual reference when rough cutting with a Dremel tool.
The process is easy, but takes time. Rough cut near the scribe line, then hand sand until smooth. Then fit on the plane and continue sanding until everything lines up perfectly.
Here is a closer look at the rough out process.
A long wooden dowel is attached to a 22″ Great Planes sanding block. Eric guides the dowel along the opposite end while I smooth sand and get closer to the the scribe line. The dowel extension will approximately make the surfaces parallel on both sides.
The first rough fit shows additional material needs to be removed. Sand and refit until alignment is correct.
Wingtips / Lights (1)
My first foray into fiberglass is modifying the wingtips to accept special inserts for the AeroLED VX landing lights and Pulsar PS position/strobe lights.
Measure twice…
Cut once, twice, three times…
Inserts rough fit in the new openings.
Layout of West resin system components.
Mix, and brush on both surfaces.
Position insert and cleco together.
Fill inside edge with remaining resin to ease the sharp angle (will help later when fiberglass cloth is applied). Let this combination dry overnight.
Now add three layers of fiberglass cloth on the inside to reinforce the insert seams. Let this cure overnight.
Fill in the outside gaps, let cure overnight, then sand roughly smooth.
Position template, drill adjustment holes and rough fit the taped landing light lens to the initial opening. Sand, sand and more sand until lens fits perfectly in the opening with sufficient clearance for later alignments with airplane axis.
Rough fit is done, need some additional build-up in certain areas. This will be done later.
Place pivot point and drill fastening holes.
The internal section of the pivot is stuffed with a cotton plug. Use E6000 structural adhesive to hold the pivot point, plus add pop rivets for additional stability. The cotton keeps the adhesive from filling the pivot cavity.
Build-up needed, as the dimensions of the fiberglass inserts obtained from AeroLED is very poor. The left side is a good 1/4″ bigger top-bottom and 1/4″ left-right compared to the other side.
Measure the lexan lens for rough cutting. Use a dremel tool for approximate size, then hand sand to closer dimensions. Electrical tape is applied around the edges to prevent scratching during the fit process.
The fit process took a long time with hand sanding. The edges still protruded a bit from the wing surface.
AWLFAIR 8020 resin and AWLFAIR 7007 red hardener are 1:1 mixed together to create a creamy fairing compound. Tape covers the entire lens.
Coat number one is applied to the fitted lens.
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An additional job for the week is rounding over some cable fairings. A dime was perfectly sized for measuring the distances.
Baggage Area (3)
After a week traveling overseas on business followed by a week at AirVenture 2016, I finally got back to the actual building process. During the off period I had ordered #2 Tefzel wire for three battery cables running from behind the baggage area to the firewall. Two were for hot leads for the dual battery, dual alternator configuration I am building and one for a solid ground lead. My concern before final riveting the left seat and baggage floors was being unable to pull the heavy/stiff wire through the already installed black plastic conduit (see previous posts on these). So after receiving the wire, a test pull was in order.
A cheap ($20) wire grip was purchased from Amazon for this test. Though inexpensive, this one has an end swivel to help guide the head assembly through the conduit. This picture shows beginning to thread the wire mesh from the grip onto the #2 Tefzel wire. Eventually about 2″ overlap was achieved.
No pictures are available from the test pull, but the Tefzel went through the conduit with no problems. Now having peace of mind about cable runs, I proceeded to use a pneumatic puller to set the rear floor and baggage compartment. Here all the central pop rivets are in place.
This view show all the edge rivets and nut plates squeezed along the main tunnel. The baggage frames and support angles are clecoed in place ready for Eric’s availability to drive while I buck. There some final adjustments to the baggage door itself I want to complete before final assembly of the frames.
The right side wire cover is also clecoed in place waiting for final installation. Next up on the to-do list is deburr and prep the tunnel covers.
Rear Wire Runs (3)
Painting the interior last week has unlocked a number of different activities which can now be undertaken. The Fourth of July 2016 weekend was used for installing things which have been prepped and staged for quite a while. The sequence of activities was based on time of day (heat in shop), and whether solo work was possible or another set of hands was needed.
A few miscellaneous parts were also painted last week. Here the outer baggage door panel is riveted onto the frame. Eric helped by driving from the exterior side, while I bucked from the inside.
Here are two different perspectives of the baggage door from the inside. The next step is fit 1″ sound damping insulation, then pop rivet the inner panel to the frame. Last step will be install the door lock/latch, but this will be after the cabin door hardware is acquired.
Saturday morning saw foam soundproofing material installed with contact cement. Rich had cut these several months ago on a previous visit. The directions say let sit for 15 minutes before bonding the two surfaces, but this caused instant adhesion between the parts and some mis-aligned panels until I figured it out. For this foam material/ cement combination the best approach is put a thin coat on the plane, followed quickly by the foam – then immediately fit together. This leaves the contact cement just a bit slippery and able to slide just a little, enough to help position the panels better.
Here are views for the side panels and underneath the rear floor panel. All is not pretty, but not to worry. All the foam installed so far is covered by another interior panel and will not be visible. I hope the sound-dampening effect proves worth the effort involved.
Okay, interior painted and foam applied. Now fit the rear seat panels and rivet in place. The photo shows thin plastic cutting boards ($8 for 5 sheets from Amazon) used to protect the side wells from being scratched by the panel on insert. This worked great and no damage was done.
Floor panel is clecoed into place, then the floors pop riveted to the ribs underneath. I used a pneumatic riveter borrowed from Tal for the cheap ones with easy access. More expensive, but delightfully easy to use, CherryMAX CR3213-04-02 rivets were installed in the difficult corners with the offset head on the 704B riveter.
The left picture shows the completed floor/rib rivets, while the right picture shows the fully completed effort. The plastic cutting sheets were used to protect the floor as the side rivets were installed.
Floor panels complete, now cut and install MS21266 nylon edging grommet material on the bulkheads where power wires, antennas, and static tubes will be run.
The main event – installing the 5/8″ ID black conduit. The prepared holes in the seat panel are first threaded with conduit.
Then the conduit is run through the interior rib, and out the lightning hole under the baggage floor.
The conduit is then fastened to anchor points with 0.010″ fiberglass cable lace. Again not the prettiest outcome, but seems to hold everything together quite well.
Using the packing peanut / fishing line / suction method, 2mm paracord is pulled through the installed conduit and tied to the bulkheads. These cords will later be used for pulling wires under the rear seat and under the baggage compartment. Once the seat panels are riveted in-place, no more access will be available.
Finally for this week, I started hand riveting the side floor angles. Once these are done, the baggage floor can be permanently attached.
Interior Paint (1)
The entire week was used to prepare for the first interior paint in the cockpit. Materials were transported from the garden shed, my usual paintbooth, to the shop. These included air compressor, paint gun, supplies, hoses, fans, filters, and barrier walls. Quite a logistics challenge. Eric and I got up Saturday at 5:00am to beat the oppressive heat which comes later in the day. Temperature in the shop was a comfortable 74F in the shop before the sun came up.
A rudimentary paint booth is constructed of large cardboard sheets and thin plywood paneling. This is not intended for long term use, just enough to keep paint/fumes fairly contained on the side.
Fans/filters placed in the tail and on the plywood barrier are just enough to keep a gentle air flow from back to front, then out the shop door. This concept, while looking very crude in the photos, worked extremely well in practice.
The basic process getting ready to shoot remains the same: suit up, shake and mix well. Then pucker and pull the trigger.
Now for the results – baggage door and rear seat areas. Only those visible areas are painted. The remaining parts are covered by side or floor panels.
Firewall and side panels. Some areas here are perhaps a bit thin on paint, but no worries about appearance, as these sections will be covered with soundproofing material and probably panels as well.
Front floorboards and forward seating areas.
I used PPG Concept paint coded DCC in Boeing grey (BAC707). This is a three part system with paint, reducer and hardener. This stuff is fantastically hard, flows together when applied properly, and covers very well. Any runs can be sanded and resprayed for a smooth finish . The downsides to this material are its high expense and caution must be taken for personal safety. The poly-isocyanates in the hardener are toxic and exposure must be avoided. Fortunately I have the HobbyAir breathing system, safety glasses, gloves and professional paints suits for protection.
Next steps are install the sound dampening material, run the electrical conduit under floor boards, then rivet all the floor panels in place. I may not do another round of painting, as the overall results for the first round were pretty good.