Last Modified October 2nd 1999

September 1999, Getting Ready to Close Up

September 1st Removed the peel ply from the LA mod and MAUW mod layup.

September 2nd - 4th No building, working in Melbourne.

September 5th Linked the fuel pumps and their associated pipe tees. This assembly will be joined later by a bypass valve and then mounted under the port access panel in the baggage bay bulkhead.

I discovered that I had a small problem with the mounting of the Andair fuel selector in my LA mod inset area. I thought I had allowed for the piece of ply when measuring the thickness of the base but in the end the layups with the ply in between just worked out to be too thick - a problem exacerbated by the fact that over that part of the exterior layup I had ended up with six plies of bid. I cut back a section of the base from the inside then laid up two layers of glass directly over the exterior glass. This section is only 3" square so shouldn't affect the overall strength of the LA mod structure.

September 6th Primed the exterior of the indented area of the LA mod. I am now becoming very concious of the order in which I finish things off in the aircraft in order to minimise disassembly during the painting and furnishing stage. By painting the indent now I can fit the fuel selector and not have to remove it again.

September 7th Speckle painted the indented area of the LA mod.

September 8th Applied the clear overcoat over the speckle coat. Did a three ply bid layup on the base of the tunnel. This will be used to create a small inspection hole through which the base of the gascolator can be dropped through when I need to clean it out. The centre of the inspection panel will have a small hole through which the gascolator drain will protrude. It's not the easiest place to get to with the wings rigged and the aircraft on the ground but sitting on the trailer (immediately after fueling up at the local petrol station) the location is relatively easy to get to. I did think about extending the drain towards the back of the aircraft but I didn't quite leave enough space under the gascolator to permit that - maybe next time :-)

September 9th - 10th No building

September 11th I had intended setting up the wing roots and the flap extensions today however the plane had different ideas. We rolled the plane out of the garage and tried to rig the port wing. No matter what we tried the wing lift pins simply would not go into the sockets. I pulled the wing off, dug out one of my original rear lift pins and tried to push it into the socket. Like the pins on the wings it too refused to go into the sockets. The temperature in Auckland this week has been warmer than any other time I have rigged the wings and I suspect that expansion of the pins and the sockets has prevented mating. The wing pins are machined and, as supplied, have very fine ridges on them. I carefully polished the pins with 600 grit wet and dry until the ridges disappeared and tried to rig the aircraft again. This time the port rigged though there is still quite a bit of friction as the pins push home. To set up the fairing on the port wing I needed to remove a couple of wrinkles that had developed in the fairing while it was in storage. To do this I clecoed it to the wing and then, while holding the fairing against the fuselage, applied heat from a hair dryer to ease the shape of the glass. Once I had the fairing set to how I wanted I took it off and worked on the port flap fairing.

First step was to open up a hole in the flap root extension foam so that the flap could mate to the fuselage. I opened this hole up as much as I could without compromising the strength of the upper and lower surfaces. Next step was to bond the extension to the inboard end of the flap. I ran a thin bead of five minute epoxy along the end of the closeout and stuck the foam onto the end. Once the expoxy had set I semi rigged the port wing and then sanded back the inside of the foam bit by bit until the wing could be fully rigged. Stefan then sat in the pilots seat and, inch by inch, raised the flaps while I took off more of the foam until the flap could be raised fully. With the supplied foam core setup I cut another piece of foam to match the basic shape and repeated the process until the new piece of foam also matched the shape of the fuselage.

September 12th Cut out the glass for the port flap layup. This layup will be over a complete layer of peel ply so I applied peel ply to the foam, holding it in place with photo mount spray. Digging out my 3M sanding splines I sanded back the Supafil that I had applied to the port side of the fuselage. With this complete I completely masked the rudder pedals on the port side, scuff sanded the entire surface in the footwell and applied grey primer to the footwell. Once the primer was dry I speckle coated the entire footwell area.

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September 13th Applied the two layers of clear acylic spray coat over the speckle coat.

September 14th - 15th No building.

September 16th Masked the starboard footwell and applied primer.

September 17th Applied the speckle coat. Laid up the first layer (the underside) of glass on the flap root extension. As the foam will be completely cut out later I covered the entire foam area with peel ply prior to doing the layup.

September 18th Finished off the starboard footwell. Sanded back the foam support block on the trailing edge then laid up the top layer of glass on the flap root extension. Finished off painting the starboard footwell.

September 19th As Stefan is going to Japan for three weeks I am without my wing rigger. I took the top off the aircraft and did some planning work for finishing off the inside prior to bonding the top permanently on. Laid up a support area for the gascolator inspection hole. This is going on the port side just behind the baggage bay bulkhead.

September 20th Marked out and cut out the inspection hole. This hole is 65mm in diameter with a 15mm lip. My shipment from aircraft spruce arrived so I fitted a couple of bolts that I was missing. Removed the masking tape from the starboard rudder pedals.

September 21st -23rd Fitted nutplates to the inspection plate. The centre of the inspection plate then had a 13mm hole drilled in the centre to allow the drain port to be placed outside of the aircraft. The gascolator will be attached to the aircraft by a metal bracket that is bolted to one of the wooden bulkhead supports.

September 25th - 26th Worked out the path of the fuel hoses and reduxed hard points to the inside skin at selected points. These hard points are 1" squares of 3mm ply glassed on each side with a 3/16" countersunk 1/2" long screw fitted. The hardpoints are attached to the skin with redux/flox. I relocated the rudder cable rubbing blocks to provide clearance from the revised brake block support arm. I placed the blocks as high as practical on the thigh support wooden block which gives a good 25mm clearance above the brake when the gear is retracted. While I was ferreting in the wheelwell I cut off 10cm of the rear end of the rudder cable tubing. I am doing this as the rudder cable will need to be lowered slightly as it passes under the flap tube as there is interference between them when the flaps are lowered.

I will bond the pieces of tubing to bulkhead support ply in order to provide the slight deflection necessary to give the required clearance.

I bonded the transponder aerial support block to the starboard side of the fuselage and then laid up a support block for the the ELT in the port baggage bay.

The support plate is made up of a block of foam floxed to the fuselage and then covered with two layers of bid lapping onto the surrounding surfaces. Another two layers of glass were added to the surface to provide enough strength for the rivnuts which secure the ELT tray to the aircraft. Once the glass was set and the rivnuts fitted into the surface I mounted the plate and then checked that the mounting was strong enough. As I can lift the aircraft lower shell with the frame I think that it passes!

September 27th - 29th A couple of my hardpoints turned out not to be so hard! For most of them the backing of redux and flox was enough to hold the screw tight but a couple of them were able to rotate. I decided to make the remaining hardpoints out of 1" squares of 1/8" aluminium with a hole tapped and countersunk to take a 3/16" screw. The screw is also loctited into the plate to help it lock.

I finally managed to find some fittings which would allow the outlets of the fuel selector to be rotated by ninety degrees. A local engineering shop stocks 1/4" NPT male to female angle blocks so I added these to the main inlet and to the outlet ports. These angled outlets remove two sharp bends in the flexible hose. There was a potential that the hoses could kink so I wanted to remove this possibility.

With the fuel selector now complete Nathan and I fitted it into the cockpit module - it definately needed two people to get it in as some of the spacing is quite tight.

The local engineering shop also had 5/16" Tees in stock so I picked up a few more and just about finished off the fuel pump sub assembly.

Starting at the right, (which is aft in the aircraft), is the gascolator with its mounting bracket to attach it to the baggage bay bulkhead support. From the outlet the 8mm hose splits into three. Two go to adapters which convert to 12mm hose prior to entering the master and secondary electric fuel pumps. The third leg goes down to where a one way valve will be inserted into the hose to provide a bypass around the pumps in the event of total electrical failure. This bypass valve is not normally present for standard Rotax 914 fuel systems however I have had a Rotax 912 mechanical fuel pump added to the engine. This third mechanical pump is purely an emergency standby and is only intended to keep the engine running long enough to fly to the nearest safe landing place.The outlets of all three paths is by 8mm hoses and tees to route back into the central tunnel under the flap actuating tube.

This sub assembly will be mounted on a support board that I have made from a sheet of fibreglass with three foam reinforcing ribs inserted to make it stiffer. This support board fits between the two port side baggage bay supports and saves having to fit a lot of hardpoints to the base of the fuselage.

September 30th Scrapped the support board idea as it placed the outlets of the pumps too high and it conflicted with the rudder cable.

Replaced the original Europa supplied golf buggy main tyre with an McCreary Air Trac 700x6 tyre. Existing flyers report improved ground handling with the Air Trac. Fitted the main wheel and bolted it up then fitted the brake tube after wrapping the tube with spiral wrap to provide greater protection. A tip... fit the tube to the cylinder first as the tube wants to rotate when tightening the nuts. Fitting it to the cylinder allows you to clamp the tube tight to prevent rotation.