6 hours.
Mostly. I still have to drill the lower holes in the VS/F712/tailwheel bracket assembly, but today I finished the up elevator stop and drilled the VS to it. I did the forward attach bracket as well, and based on the plumb line down the holes in the rudder attach brackets, it’s pretty dang straight.
I also finished bending the tubes for the boost pump. Making tube bends is a dark art, and I’m by no means a master of it, but I got everything cut and bent and it all lines up without any stress on the fittings, and none of the lines rub together. All the covers fit too, which is a bonus. The new tubing bender performs really well, but it’s a little unwieldy in some situations and I did a few hand-bends where I couldn’t get the right angle with the bender.
The control column got some work today, which was more pain than fun, because the powder-coated parts don’t fit together well at all. I wound up filing the stick bearing down so it would fit in the yoke on the main bar, along with the brass bushing. But that gets to wait anyway, I need to finish drillng the VS.
Mounted the VS!
more VS mounting prep
1 hours.
Drilled and deburred the up elevator stop. That should be the last thing standing in the way of mounting the VS, which might happen tomorrow. I’m dying to get the control column and push tube done so I can detach the emp and put it back in the attic, because this Tetris game I’m playing with the fuse, the engine, the benches, and the toolbox has gone on long enough. I also need to keep this project from brachiating into too many lines of work. Having ten things partially finished is not how I want to do this. I sleep better knowing things are done. I’ve already got the wings open with no servos, I’ve got the engine needing work and parts, and i’ve got the fuselage that needs to be brought up to a level where I can paint. This weekend is supposed to be warm, so I think I can prime the inside of the push tube if I move fast enough mounting the VS.
“I’d have to pin his head to the panel.”
One of my favorite lines from The Road Warrior, or Mad Max 2, as everybody but us yankees calls it. To paraphrase a little green guy with a mean spin kick, “always in motion, is the panel.” When I started this adventure, I knew I wanted glass instead of steam. I’m a visual effects dork, I grew up on MFD’s and synthetic vision in movies, like the display in Snake’s glider in Escape from New York, or in the dropship in ‘Aliens,’ both of which were done by painting the edges of foam core terrain slices with fluorescent paint and filming them under blacklight to make them look like computer images. There’s also the HITS in Bladerunner, which is pretty much the only way I’d trust the average Angeleno driver in my airspace, even in 2019. That’s only 10 years from now, by the way. Fast forward to present and there’s a tall stack of options to choose from; BMA, Dynon, MGL, Grand Rapids, Tru-Trak, the list is long and distinguished. At first I was all about the EFIS-One from Blue Mountain Avionics. It was my first synVis option.. The Dynon was a good replacement for the steam gauges, but the BMA had some eye-popping features and seemed like a better option to me. At least it seemed like a better option to the ‘me’ in the alternate universe where I have unlimited amounts of money. 14k, ouch. The Grand Rapids stuff is cool, but also expensive, and the screen’s not big enough. If this is going to be my main info feed for flight ops, I don’t want to squint at it. So along comes MGL. The Enigma was intriguing, but it wasn’t big enough, and I was about to blow it off entirely, except for the price point, which is great for what the unit does. Then MGL came out with their Odyssey. 10.4″ of daylight-readable synthetic-vision, programmable-screen goodness. And the price is defiinitely right. for about 6k, I get synthetic terrain, HITS, moving map, WAAS/RAIM GPS, engine monitoring, all the probes and sensors necessary, and it talks to the Garmin SL30 for radio NAV ops. Not only that, it drives Trio autopilot servos. MGL also has their own COMM, which fits in a standard 3.5″ instrument hole, and communicates with the EFIS via proprietary link over a nice tidy CAT5 cable. They are supposed to be releasing a NAV radio companion to this unit, which is fully SL30 compatible. Oh, and it talks to the ZAON PCAS products as well, and it won’t be long before it will display traffic threats in the synVis.
Daydreaming about this is fine, and the whole “what if your fancy gear packs up at night in IMC” question is answered this way: I’ll be flying day-VFR most of the time. Like 99% of the time. I will probably put a second EFIS in there, probably a secondhand Dynon D10 just in case the Odyssey goes south, but I expect it to function as designed just shy of all the time. I would like to get my IFR ticket in this aircraft, and at that point, I will install TSO’d equipment as required. Until that time, I’m going to be quite content with the current mission of regional cross-country VFR and local hops. How hard is it to get to wine country from SMO anyway? Not very.
All my tubes and wires, careful notes…
2 hours.
I suppose I knew better than buying a tubing bender on ebay for twelve bucks and a flaring tool for about fifteen. The tubing bender gouges the hell out of the tubing, and the flare tool die scores the tubing where it grips. So let’s see: Stress risers in aluminum tubing, check. High pressure fuel, check. Inside the cabin, check. Near electrical devices, check. Boo. Hiss. Ordered the Imperial 3-size tubing bender and the nice rol-air (not the $600 one) tool off Spruce this morning.. dammit.. that’s what I forgot. the spring tubing bender. Maybe I can live without it. We’ll see.
Anyway, I got some extra tubing, and went back out to begin the process of mounting the vertical stabilizer. Not sure if I mentioned it before, but the two main longerons and the aft deck stuck out past F-712 about 1/16″, enough to keep the VS from laying flat on F-712. This morning I filed down the offending metal and cut off the 5/8″ from the forward spar to make it friendly with the F-781 mount plate. I drilled the mount plate to the HS forward spar and bolted it in, temporarily. This is where it sits until I can get the VS aligned to vertical and drill the holes in the VS/F-712 sandwich. I need to get this done so I can make the elevator push tube and elevator stops constructed. At that point, I’ll do the control column, and once I’m convinced that rigging the aircraft is actually possible, i’ll put the emp back in the attic until final assembly. I’m also rapidly approaching the singularity point of painting the interior. Before this happens, I should probably figure out what I’m going to do about autopilot servos. I haven’t closed the wings yet either, which is also relevant for that issue, so there’s going to be a prying open of the wallet in the near future. I’m saving that for later, when I know for a fact that all the wiring has been run and won’t need anything new for a long long time.
More stick boot ring
1 hour.
An hour is long enough to screw something up. I got a new Dremel over the weekend, so this morning I tried to finish the stick boot rings. In getting used to it, I screwed up the radiused inner corner on one (cut the radius away with a wayward cutting wheel), but the other one came out great.. I’ll have to make a new one tomorrow, and I can finally mark all the interior trim bits except for the center section covers off my list.
HS drilled to Fuse
4 hours.
This part isn’t supposed to happen for a while, but the weather stinks, so I can’t haul the ship out of the guest house and drill wing incidence. Nor can I do my control column, because I’m still waiting for 2 AN4 bolts to be shipped across the country for some reason. All the little fuel system cover stuff was done, and it’s really time to paint the interior, but I didn’t have the time to do that either, plus it’s too cold. I’m in Los Angeles, and there was a layer of ice on the shallow puddle of rainwater on the hot tub cover this morning. Not frost, ice. Shelley picked up a 1/8″ thick piece of it to show me while I was eating breakfast. So it’s suboptimal for anything involving paint, which is fine with me, I hate paint. But that means I’m stopped cold for installing systems like rudder cables, wiring, and the 5-bolt gussets in front of the main spar where the landing gear mounts on the A model go.
What got done yesterday in lieu of all that stuff was the positioning and drilling of the horizontal stabilizer.
I called up my friend Dave to see if he’d be interested in helping out and he was on board, so we got the HS down out of the attic and drilled the control horns.
I’m so glad Dave could come over and help with this, because as you can see, it’s a tight space and huge deal, and having two sets of eyes is invaluable.
After lots of measuring, and I mean LOTS, we clamped the HS to the aft deck just like it shows in the drawing, with the shims sandwiched between HS 714 and the aft deck. The manual says to put the hs right on the deck and drill it, then matchdrill the shims using the holes in HS 714 as a guide, which I do not get at all. What we did was measure the tips to the centerline, measure again, clamp the bejeezus out of it, measure tip distance after clamping, then step back and look for anything obvious. Then we drilled 1/8″ pilot holes through the HS/shim/deck/doubler sandwich. Outer holes first, then inner.
Then we measured again. All good.
Dave, measuring a third time, and checking edge distance inside with the flashlight and a mirror.
Then we drilled the aft supports. Dave made two perfectly 3/16″ thick spacers from MDF to support the aft spar at the right height while we drilled the pilot holes. MDF is great stuff for this. it cuts perfectly straight and smooth, and makes great shims without having to stack aluminum scraps together.
After that it was off for wine and traditional Christmas Eve sushi. Sushi is traditional Christmas Eve fare, right?
Big up to Dave for the huge help!
fuel tubes and stick boot rings.
3 hours.
I got over my tubingbenderphobia long enough to make the filter output line for the AFP fuel pump. This line delivers clean fuel from the fuel filter to the high-pressure AFP boost pump. I also mounted the Andair fuel valve in it’s plate. This was particularly fun because at first try, I was unable to get the screw out of the valve knob so I could take it off. There’s a spring loaded release knob on the main knob and you have to lift this up to get a custom, cut down hex wrench in there to get the screw out. This is all good, but the release knob doesn’t lift far enough to clear the screw, so what you have to do is pull up on the main knob while loosening the screw and the whole thing comes off the valve shaft. Genius, really. It insures you won’t lose the screw accidentally, which is great. The stainless steel screws don’t look much different from metal shavings once they hit the shop floor.
Here’s the valve and pump in place:
Here are the two stick boot rings waiting to have the center holes cut out. My Dremel died a sudden and traumatic death a while back, so I’m at a loss for things to use for precision cuts on small pieces. I guess I could sack up and use the air-powered cutoff wheel, but that thing has a way of going wild and I’m not sure I trust it on a piece like this. If I don’t get a new Dremel soon, i’ll just have to do it that way.
This is the pump with the pump supply line installed. I haven’t pressure tested this line yet, I need to get an AN6 plug and a fitting with a schrader valve on it so I can give it 20lbs of air and see if it leaks. Anal, sure, but fuel spraying all over the cockpit on first start is not a scene I want to shoot.
A couple of gratuitous shots of the Andair valve. Maybe by now you’ve guessed correctly that the expensive stuff gets more photo action.
Finished the fuel system covers.
1.5 hours.
If by ‘finished’ we mean ‘nutplates installed’ then yeah, finished. The covers are ready for paint, and will join the ranks of the other attic parts until The Great Interior Paint Day happens. I considered trying to get into the fuel lines, but i’m not sure about the sequence of that, I think it comes later. Tomorrow I’ll go over the manual and the plans again and figure out what to do next. The wings were easy, but the fuse has a lot more bits and pieces, and not all of them good for gratuitous visuals, which is why I’m not bothering to post a lot of pictures.
more work on the covers
.5 hours
got my #19 threaded bits, so I was able to finish drilling the forward cabin covers. I still have to bend the louvres out for heat distribution and some other stuff, But I’m about ready to stick a fork in those. Was unable to set up the control column, because the 2 AN4-27 bolts I need somehow walked away. No biggie.. got them coming in the next spruce order.
Some loose ends
4 hours.
Finally finished reinstalling the F-712 bulkhead (or whichever bulkhead is most aft). I got some reduced-head Cherrymax rivets from GAHco and was able to do the inner bottom 8 rivets. And they work as advertised; unless you look close, you won’t be able to tell them apart from solid rivets, and with some filler in there, you won’t be able to tell unless you can see the inboard side.
I also got the forward tunnel cover modded to mate up with the AFP high-pressure boost pump kit from Van’s. The new covers are ready to go, but I haven’t drilled them to the floor stiffeners yet because I don’t have a #19 threaded-shank drill bit.
Apparently they’re not that common of a size. AC Spruce didn’t have them, and neither did MSC Industrial Supply, which surprised the hell out of me, since they usually have everything. I did find them at US Tool, but hold on to your potatoes, Dr. Jones, they’re $3.81 each. Well, after that bit of information superhighway robbery, I went back to work on the forward gussets, the aluminum ones between the spar and the longerons just forward of it. Fortunately everything was a nice, smooth fit, no issues with drilling the 5 holes in each one. Once that was done, I was kind of at a loss for what to do next, so I clecoed the top skin back on, and that’s where it will stay, I think, until the construction manual says otherwise:
I missed out on the PCU5000x group buy on VAF, but I don’t think I need to spend 1000+ bucks on a new prop governor when mine could possibly be just fine.