In which the author has a seat

August 22nd, 2006

I cam home tonight and was surprised to find this big box from Classic Aero waiting for me on the porch. I opened it up to find…

Seats! They look really great. The quality appears to be outstanding.

I sprung for the fancy Aviator seats, which have adjustible lumbar supports. Gotta be comfortable when flying. These are the adjusty-knobs on the back.

Each seat has two booster cushions. We'll see, eventually, how well Mary is able to see over the nose. It may turn out that we need to add some extra cushion stuff for her to see out. Luckily Classic Aero said they'd be happy to make up some extra booster cushions if we need them.

And I even like how the colors turned out. I can't wait to sit in the fuselage and make airplane noises.

I got the seats a little earlier in the building process than most other folks seem to do, but I wanted to have them in place for fitting the rudder pedals and other stuff like that, so the airplane will be exactly set up for how I'll want it when I'm flying it.

Posted in Fuselage

Odds and ends

August 20th, 2006

We were entertaining guests most of the weekend, so not much progress to report on the plane. I did a few miscellaneous things, though.

I made up the low-pressure hoses that go between the brake fluid reservoir and the passenger's brake pedals. These will have nothing but ambient pressure in them, so even my mediocre hose-making skills were up to the task. I decided to have all four of the high-pressure brake hoses professionally made, however – a real hose shop has better tools to assemble and test hoses than I do. For my own future reference, I'll need two 36" -3 size and two 16" -4 size hoses.

In order to estimate the required hose lengths, I had to figure out roughly where and how the parking brake valve will be mounted. So, I made this little standoff for it out of some hat section material I got from Van's a while back. This will get riveted to the firewall later. I used nutplates here on the assumption that it would be a pain to get nuts onto the back of this once it's installed.

Then I spent a bit of time making reinforcements for the armrests. On my old airplane, both armrests were sagging in the middle after a couple years' worth of use. On this plane I decided to rivet on some aluminum-angle doublers to stiffen them up a bit. I used my rivet spacing tool to mark out the rivet holes:

The 0.032" angles are oriented flange-up, thus making a sturdy C-shaped section where before there was just a single bent flange. This view is looking backwards from the forward end of the armrest, which is noticeably sturdier with the angle clecoed in place.

I dimpled and deburred the angles and armrests – the Burraway tool was handy for deburring the holes in the already-installed pieces – but I didn't rivet anything in place just yet. It turns out that the reinforcement angles block access to a couple of the rivets that will eventually hold the F-704K's in place, so the angles will go into the parts box until they're needed.

Posted in Fuselage

Finished empennage attach

August 12th, 2006

Today I took the empennage stuff completely apart yet again, deburred and cleaned everything, and primed the various parts that needed it:

I also vacuumed out the tailcone and smoothed and spot-primed a few places where there were scratches and tool marks.

Once the primer was dry (it doesn't take long in Kansas in the summer) I riveted the up elevator stop to the top deck:

I also riveted the forward attach plate and shim to the vertical stabilizer spar:

Scott came by to check out the project and I put him to work bolting the tail back on yet again.

Since all the bolts are in now, I attached the tailwheel. Once I'm done with rigging the control surfaces, I'll take the tail off and put it back in storage, but I should be able to use some shorter bolts and a temporary doubler of some sort to keep the tailwheel fastened to the aft bulkhead.

I installed the F-790 aft elevator pushrod and rigged it so when the elevators are clamped in trail with the horizontal stabilizer, the elevator bellcrank is exactly vertical. This happens when a 3/8" socket placed over the lower bolt head is perfectly centered in the access hole, like so:

Just for grins I also installed the F-789 forward elevator pushrod to see how it would fit. Something seems to be wrong, though… In this photo the elevators, bellcrank, and control sticks are all in their neutral positions, and even with the rod ends backed out as far as I dare, the forward pushrod is way too short. I promise I made it the exact length called out in the plans, so I'm not sure what the story is. It may turn out that I have to re-make that pushrod, which is no big deal since the end fittings are not terribly expensive and the tube stock is available locally – no expensive shipping of long pieces, hooray.

I also spent some time cleaning up the garage, which was a mess. It's still a mess but at least most of the tools are put away now.

Posted in Empennage, Fuselage, Landing gear

Belt and suspenders

August 10th, 2006

Back from a short vacation. We did a bit of rafting and a bit of hiking. Here's us on top of a mountain. It was very windy.

Just for grins, I called Van's and asked if there were any issues with the edge distance on the top two bolts versus the tailwheel weldment. Ken Scott said, roughly, "As long as you have any edge distance whatsoever it's no problem at all, but if you're a real belt and suspenders type of guy you could put another AN3 bolt in the middle." Belt and suspenders? Sign me up!

So here I've put an extra 3/16" bolt in there to help me sleep better at night:

Man, there's all kinds of stuff in there. Actually the whole tailcone is filled with dropped washers, nuts, clecoes, and metal shavings galore. After I get the empennage attach chores done I'll have to clean all this out.

Posted in Empennage, Fuselage, Vertical Stabilizer

Working on empennage attach some more

August 5th, 2006

On an impulse, I bought this cool angle drill that was on sale at Brown Tool. I didn't get a chance to use it today though, since I need to replace the air fitting and it's really stuck on there tight. It'll have to wait until I reattach the vice to the bench.

I carefully positioned the F-781 forward spar attach plate so it was lined up vertically and on the centerline of the aircraft, then drilled it to the horizontal stabilizer spar. The vertical stabilizer spar is just floating there in this photo, it's not clamped or attached at the moment. You can also just barely make out the 0.032" shim I made to go between the plate and the spar, since there was a gap there. It's held in place with scotch tape in this picture.

I used a metal straightedge to make sure the aft end of all three rudder hinge points were in line, then I dropped a string down through the bolt holes just to double check. Small movements at the front end of the stabilizer have big effects back here in terms of getting the hinges to line up.

Once everything was good and lined up, I match drilled the holes in the attach plate through the VS spar, or at least as many as I could reach with the angle drill. I also drilled and reamed the pilot holes through the attach plate and HS spar up to 3/16".

I removed the stabilizer from the airplane to finish drilling the remaining rivet holes.

There is a tooling hole in the aft bulkhead exactly where the plans call for you to put the lowest of the three 1/4" bolts that attach the bottom part of the VS rear spar to the aft bulkhead and tailwheel mount. I center punched and drilled a #30 pilot hole right in the middle of that tooling hole, through the tailwheel mount.

Then I put the vertical stabilizer back on, bolted everything down, and back-drilled through the pilot hole into the stabilizer spar. Then I drilled the resulting hole up to 3/16" for temporary fitting.

I unbolted everything and took the stabilizer back off, then marked and drilled the other two bolt holes through the lower hinge bracket, using the dimensions on the plans.

Then I bolted the stabilizer back in place yet again, drilled and reamed all three bolt holes up to 1/4", and put some temporary bolts in.

Here's an inside view. There is acceptable edge distance on both of the upper bolts – I was worried about this – but they're a little closer to where the radius of the bent-up edges start than they probably should be. On the left side, I may have to grind down the washer a tiny bit to get it to lay flat. If I'd moved the holes inboard about 1/8" each from where the plans have you put them, it would have been perfect. This is okay though. This entire area has you measuring and drilling blind, so if it comes out halfway decent you've done about as good as you can.

This looks a lot like it did a few days ago, but now all the holes are drilled and the vertical stabilizer is actually bolted in place. This thing is completely solid – you can grab ahold of the end and give it a shake, and it won't budge. I suppose that's a good thing for a 200 mph aircraft.

I just have to deburr, prime, and rivet some stuff, then it can be bolted in place for good. Actually though, I will probably take it off again and just put some smaller bolts through the tailwheel mount instead. That way I can roll the fuselage around without the tail, to save space in the workshop.

But first, off to Colorado for a mini vacation.

Posted in Empennage, Fuselage, Vertical Stabilizer

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