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Mon, Sep 06 2010 @ 14:51 in Switzerland

Preparing the wingtips for lights

Mon, Nov 01 2004 @ 04:49 in Switzerland
Contributed by: Mick
Views: 1,778

I've purchased the CreativAir wingtip lights, which include the landing/taxi lights, and the red/green position lights. The position lights are LEDs, which is cool, and the landing/taxi lights are halogen - very hot. They are 75watts, which means that they will pull about 6 amps in our 12volt system. Quite a lot of current.

Additionally, I'll be installing some "low profile" strobes in the wingtips. It will be pretty busy there.

Here are some photos of the preparation of the wingtips.

The red LED board is before trimming, and the green is after. I trimmed them down using a belt sander. Messy, but easy.

Drilling the hole for the strobe.

Cutout lines marked. I ended up cutting out a lot more than this, as you will see below.

I thought I was done - wrong! More to cut. The instructions recommend leaving about 0.75", but that's way too much. I used a dremel tool for this. Worked great.

Starting to install the nutplates. This is one of those "yes I really built this thing" photos. I wear a respirator whenever I do something like sanding or cutting plastic or glass. Never can be too safe. If you lose lung tissue, for whatever reason, it does not grow back or heal. I don't want to spend the last years of my life on oxygen, unless it's when I'm flying over the Alps!

Looking good with the nutplates in, and the rest of the trimming done. Notice that I used cherry countersunk steel rivets. Very quick and easy, but expensive.

Slightly closer picture of the other wingtip. I didn't use the nutplates that were included with the kit. They were rather cool "corner" nutplates, and I could get regular and single lug nutplates to work. I have more of those, so I'm saving the corners in case I have another application for them.

Here is a shot with the partially assembled lighting assembly sitting on there. The pre-drilled holes in the LED PCB are not exactly in the right place, which makes the screws kind of bind up a bit.

Bottom wing skin riveted

Sat, Oct 30 2004 @ 06:37 in Switzerland
Contributed by: Mick
Views: 1,277

Emmett came over and helped me close up the wings. It was a lot more work than I had expected. Took us from about 09:00 to 17:30 with a 1:30 lunch break. Plus I had a couple more rivets to finish the next day (today). It turned out quite well, with only about 3-4 little boo-boos. OK, there was one kind of nasty one where the bucking bar slipped out of place. My bad. That's why I wanted to buck - in case anything went wrong, I wanted it to be my fault! What I did learn is that driving hundreds of rivets perfectly is *very hard*. I'm really glad the only big skin I had to do on the QB was on the bottom of the wing. If I catch anyone looking under there...

One thing I did learn is that if you can buck and drive the rivet yourself, without a helper, it goes slower, but it is easier to make sure the bucking bar is placed properly. You can feel your own pressure on the rivet gun to make sure you are on a rivet, not a cleco or something else.

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Pitot Tube Plumbing

Wed, Oct 27 2004 @ 07:32 in Switzerland
Contributed by: Mick
Views: 1,369

Even though I have purchased an expense Gretz Aero pitot mount, I've decided to just use the simple Van's method for the pitot. Just trying to keep it simple.

Unfortunately, using the Van's method, the nut of the AN bulkhead fitting slightly overlaps where the access port will be. I'll have to trim it.

Looking from the inside, you can see there is not a lot of room here. The nut is jammed right between two rivets. Looks like I could have, and should have, made the hole slightly closer to the spar, but it was not obvious where the hole should have gone.

Here are the plans - all the info is there, but you've gotta look pretty closely. This is the case with many parts of the construction. Read the plans, and just when you think you understand what to do, read them again!

I've run the tubing in, bent it, and then flared it. Ooops - what's wrong with this picture? Yep, I forgot the hardware on there. This the first time that's happened.

Here it is all installed. I forgot to put in the external part of the pitot for this photo. I bought a pretty stainless steel unit from the Orndorffs in Texas. http://www.fly-gbi.com/

Now I just need to hook it up to the instruments in the cockpit!

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Wing wiring conduit

Wed, Oct 27 2004 @ 07:10 in Switzerland
Contributed by: Mick
Views: 3,733

After a lot of deliberation, consternation, and flip-flopping, I've finally decided how to get the wires from one end of my wing to the other. Amazingly, I'm using the PVC conduit that I purchased from Hornbach (like Home Depot, but with German prices) about a year ago. It's got a 16mm ID, which is enough for most of the wires and the tube for the AOA, but probably not enough for a remote magnometer. We'll see.

The big issue was finding the best way to attach the tubing to the wing. I got a lot of suggestions from the net, and decided to roll with the bit of angle riveted to the ribs, and "cushion clamps" a.k.a. Adel clamps.

Here is a picture of the angle that I created. There is a left and a right, since some ribs have the lightening holes, with the raised flange, one way, and some have them the other. Notice that I tried to make them a bit lighter by cutting off a corner. They also each have a nutplate. Quite a bit of work.

Here is a bracket attached to a rib.

View from the other side.

Outboard bracket on the left wing.

The tube installed. Notice that I don't yet have the wing skin on. I really hope that this conduit nor the brackets interfere with riveting on the skin. That would be a hassle.

I only put cushion clamps on every other rib. This holds pretty firmly, and keeps weight and work to a minimum.

I also skipped several of the inboard ribs - just not needed to support the PVC, and it would be more work that I would have cared to do. The one rib that was not easily accessible was a bear. That took about 80% of the time.

I've got a lot of tubing sticking out the inboard end of the wing, and I plan to run this right into the cockpit, using the rubber grommet to protect the PVC and seal the hole. It will need to be trimmed a bit.

Overall, I'm quite happy with the way it turned out. I truly hope I don't have trouble putting on the final skin.

Update: 2005.04.17 - No problem putting the wing skins on at all. None of the brackets nor the conduit conflicted with either the skin or the bucking bars.

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Aileron stops

Sat, Sep 25 2004 @ 05:56 in Switzerland
Contributed by: Mick
Views: 8,524

The Van's suggested way of doing the aileron stops is probably quite good, but I felt it was a bit complex, and it seems like it would be hard to get the stops installed in exactly the right place. I planned on waiting until the last moment to install them, because I was not too sure how to do it right.

After installing the ailerons, and looking at all the controls, I found what I believe to be a better way to do the control stops, and that is with a bit of delrin rod, installed over one of the spacers that are on the bolt that connects the small aileron pushrod, on each aileron.

I went to ACS on the web, and bought several different sizes of delrin rod. I was not sure what diameter would be best. I would have bought the delrin rod at McMaster-Carr, but they only sell it in 5 foot lengths, and I need about two inches. I bought these from ACS - they are one foot long, their minimum quantity for this stuff.

Here I've drilled a hole in the center of the rod so that the spacer can go in there. Turns out it's about 8mm, which is good, since I have some excellent metric drill bits. I chose the 0.5 inch diameter rod, the smallest diameter that I purchased. The largest I bought was 7/8 inch. I'm sure I'll find something to do with this stuff.

Here is the finished sleeve of delrin with the aluminium spacer in there. Perfect fit, with just a bit of slow rotation allowed.

Here is the delrin sleeve installed. What I like about this installation is that it is delrin against aluminium, not metal against metal. The delrin is right next to the pushrod, which means that there is almost no leverage on it. All the force of the pushrod on the delrin goes right to the aileron mount bracket, which is very solid. This bracket is where the Van's aileron stop would have gone anyway.

The result is very solid, and I believe pretty elegant. I'll have to suggest this to Van's, since it more closely matches their philosophy of being clever, simple, and cheap.

Update: 20050424 - Just to clarify, one of these delrin stops needs to go on each aileron.

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Root wing fairings

Tue, Sep 14 2004 @ 06:44 in Switzerland
Contributed by: Mick
Views: 1,303

For some reason I kind of dreaded installing the root wing fairings, thinking that it would be tricky. It was far from it - very easy. The fairings towards the back needed a tad bit of trimming before the initial install, and then they went right into the pre-punched holes.

The fronts go in after the backs, and you have to drill a hole in the spar flange using the prepunched hole in the rear fairing. This hole is used by the front fairing, along with the prepunched hole at the end, to help position it.

The front fairing is used to drill the holes in the wing. Be sure you leave enough edge distance! I got a bit closer than I would have liked, but it's still ok.

Most of the time spent is down here, underneath the wing. This part is a bit tricky to get right. The rubber channel sort of stops, and the end of the fairing seems to be looking for a good place to sit. Not totally slick, but should be ok. It's places like this that I would love to look at on other builder's RV8s, but there aren't any around here!

Once they are on, you can use a bit of metal, like a thick piece of 0.125 inch or 0.187 inch to mark the amount of distance you need on the fairing for the rubber channel that seals the gap. Notice that there is a little "joggle" in the rear fairing here, so that the front can overlap it. I got a nice wrinkle in my joggle, unfortunately. I hope I can find a way to cover this up.

Here you see the left front fairing with just about enough gap. I ended up trimming this a bit more.

Here are some views of the fairings with the rubber gap seal installed. I found that it is easier to cleco the front and rear fairings together, put the rubber on, and then cleco the fairings to the wing. A bit of lubricant helps the rubber seal slide nicely.

When I remove the wings, I'll do the dimpling and install the nutplates. The plans recommend 8-32 screws, but I will use 6-32, since they will look better. There ain't much stress here, and 6-32 screws will work fine. Stainless steel Torx, of course!

Update: 2005-03-22

I decided to use 8-32 screws here, mainly to be consistent with the plans, and the 6-32 screws kind of felt a bit small. Also, I could not find certain types of countersunk nutplates in the 6-32 size.

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Wing root fairing attach

Thu, Aug 26 2004 @ 00:56 in Switzerland
Contributed by: Mick
Views: 1,890

Tried to test mount the wing root fairings, and ran into a little problem with the tank attach brackets. Here are some pictures:

Note here I have indicated the material that needs to be removed to have the wing root fairing sit correctly.

Van's said that I can just trim the F-863 so that the wing root fairing will fit, but there is not quite enough meat at the top. They suggested that I install a 3rd bolt in the middle, but since I've already cut out the middle as recommended in the plans, I'll just fabricate a new part. I've ordered a new bit of channel that I originally used to make the part, and it should get here in a week or two. Not a big deal, since there are plenty of other things to work on.

Update: The material arrived, and I made new brackets. Here is the article:

http://www.rv8.ch/article.php?story=2004090323465399

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Mounting the wings

Tue, Aug 24 2004 @ 22:30 in Switzerland
Contributed by: Mick
Views: 1,759

Got the wings on today, with a lot of help from Emmett. Everything went very well - no surprises.

Trying to get the spar holes lined up...

*Now* it's starting to look like a real airplane!

Look at that beautiful reamed hole. Reamers rock.

Final measurements showed things just within the Van's recommended 1/2" of length difference between the wingtips and some point on the tail end of the fuselage. It would have been quite easy to make it perfectly exact, but I didn't for two reasons:

1) I'm not totally sure the fuselage is exactly straight. Putting on the tail, I found some things that are not perfectly square, so getting a perfect measurement from somewhere on the fuselage is not too easy.

2) I had a choice between the tape measure showing that things are exact, or having the wing spars fitting into the spar box very "neutrally". In other words, the wings had a natural neutral position in the spar box, which was slightly off of the perfect measurement. I decided that as long as we are within the Van's requirement for the distance from wingtip to tail, it would be better to have the spar not under load all the time, binding on the spar box.

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Pressure testing the fuel tanks

Fri, Aug 20 2004 @ 20:00 in Switzerland
Contributed by: Mick
Views: 1,195

The QB tanks come tested from the factory, so the only thing that needs to be tested is the stuff that I added to the tanks. In my case, that would be a return fuel line, the fuel level senders, and the tank covers. In one tank, where I started to install a flop tube, I cut an extra hole for the fuel level sender which I got to plug up.

Here is the right tank under pressure (about 2 PSI):

Here is the left tank under pressure. Notice that I never removed this tank from the wing. The rubber glove can be replaced with a standard balloon if you have one available.

I'm very happy to say that the tanks held pressure nicely. I hope to never see any nasty blue fuel stains on my tanks!

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Cool gas caps - retrofit lockable fuel caps

Mon, Aug 16 2004 @ 23:30 in Switzerland
Contributed by: Mick
Views: 2,364

I've heard lots of complaints about the standard Van's gas caps, and Van's does offer a solution. The "deluxe" gas caps can be installed, but they only work on the "slow build" wings. QB wings can't (reasonably) be retrofitted. Well, luckily at the Hoganas (SE) RV fly-in I found Robin and Mark. They flew in with their Jodel, and are the suppliers for the Van's deluxe gas cap. It turns out they have a retrofit version, and I bought a pair. They apparently sell them via Aircraft Spruce as well, but I have never noticed them.

The advantages are that they are lockable, easy to open, don't leak water (they claim).

Here is a picture of the kit, with the two standard Van's caps at the top.

The sleeve goes into the normal gas cap opening, attached via proseal. Note that it does reduce the size of the opening, but we tested the sleeve on a variety of pump sizes, and there is no problem with fit. The sleeve does slightly reduce the view into the cap, but most pumps seem to be auto-stopping these days, so I doubt that will be a problem.

The sleeve slipped into the hole. Perfect fit.

The cap on. Very clean, locks, and does not leak water. I did a tank pressure test, and they don't leak air either.

Update: 5 September 2004

These fuel caps can be bought from Aircraft Spruce as part number 05-01006 and from Van's Retrofit Lockable Fuel Caps

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