|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Last Modified June 30th 2001
1st - 4th June A long weekend. With the weather turning out a few crystal clear days I dragged the fuselage outside and, while not being directed to do things around the garden, attacked lots of little jobs that I had been putting off until the weather cleared.
Top of the list was mounting the port side door gas strut. The port door
doesn't sit as well as the starboard and I had to fill the area just aft of the
door and in the centre back to fix the step. Lesson. Do not start priming or
painting the fuselage until you have the door gas struts fitted. I cut back
the paint and filled the area. Once it had set I sanded the filled area to blend
to a nice profile. While I was sanding I went over the entire fuselage once
again to remove any rough areas I had missed the first, second and third times
round!
I had been trying to work out a way of getting the strobe cables from the strobe unit at the rear to the wings without running in parallel with the other cables. If I had allowed for this prior to bonding the cockpit module in then it would have been possible however I admitted defeat and ran the cables along the ducts.
It is desirable to have heel guards in front of the rudder pedals to prevent
the paint being chipped away or carpet being scuffed. I made these out of thin
aluminium and will rivet them in place once I have bought some 1/8"
countersunk rivets.
The nylaflow cable duct feeding the port control stick needed bonding into
place so I tack bonded the duct to the tunnel wall with 5 minute (they lie)
epoxy. I'll lay over a bid strip later to keep it in place.
A quick trip was made to the hangar to retrieve the seatbelts. These were easy to fit into place on the appropriate bolts though it did require a teenage son to crawl underneath and hold the bolt in place in the tunnel while I tightened the nut. With the seats now finished, Stefan acted as guinea pig to verify that the ergonomics were good. The reaction - "wow, these seats are really comfortable". He also commented that the plane felt as if it had more leg room than ZK-UBD, which in fact has the same. By extending the rake angle on the seat back I have been able to create the impression of greater leg room which also results in a much more comfortable seating posture and greater lumbar support.
If you look at the door surround on many Europas you'll notice scuff or chip marks on the paint where the door bolt hits the surround if the door is closed while the latch is in the closed position. This was really starting to bug me as my door surrounds were already starting to look battered. As an experniment I made up a couple of striker plates out of very thin stainless steel and tried them in place. They work marvellously and don't impede closing of the door at all. I'll now go ahead with fitting these permanently to both door surrounds once the top coat is on.
Best comment of the weekend. "Look Daddy, that man has finished his plane". Ah, the innocence of youth!
5th - 7th June I spent the evenings making up an audio mixer and shuffling things around on the right hand section of the instrument panel. My aircraft has quite a few audio sources and the mixer shown diagrammed on Bob Nuckoll's Aeroelectric web site is a tidy little design.
8th June Marked out the sheet metal for the oil cooler support bracket and also marked out the instrument panel holes for the ELT indicator.
9th & 10th June Time to punch some holes through the firewall. There are a lot of things needed to be mounted on the firewall and it was important not to end up with conflicts. To prevent this happeneing I started by positioning things that had to be fixed in location, went onto things that depended on the fixed items and then positioned the items which could go anywhere.
First in was the turbo wastegate servo. The servo comes fitted to the cable on the engine so I first marked the position of the actuator and then marked the position of the cable where it passed through the clamp - a bottle of red nail varnish is kept in the garage specifically for this type of work. With the servo free of the cable I marked its position on the top of the tunnel aft of the firewall. Two MS21042-4 nut plates were then riveted to the top of the tunnel. Europa then has you screw in two 1/4 inch bolts fron the wrong side of the nut plates. Hah! Have you ever tried to do this on a nutplate that has never been used? I drilled out the rivets, ran a bolt though the nutplates to open them up a bit and then repeated the riveting process. I fitted a Cable Safe sleeve where the cable will traverse the firewall in order to provide a secure connection point.
Next up was the Turbo Control Unit (TCU). This was positioned on the back of the firewall in line with the left hand side of the tunnel a couple of inches lower than Europa specify in order to keep clear of the lip I had made at the back of my instrument panel. I counterbored the front of the firewall as documented and floxed in a couple of tinnerman washers then mounted the TCU. The lines from the TCU to the two pressure sensors is very short and this determined the location of the sensor bracket which I positioned on the front of the firewall slightly to the port side of the TCU. The cables to the sensors are terminated with connectors which means that a hole must be opened up to allow these to pass through. I drilled a 1 3/4" hole to the port side of the TCU and passed the cables through. I made up another bracked and postioned this above the two pressure sensors to hold the MAP sensor for my engine management system and the pressure switch for my RiteAngle Angle of Attack Indicator.
Next up was the Audio Flight Avionics cable termination box which was positioned on the back of the firewall to the left of the hole and then started laying wires into the AFA unit from around the plane. Each cable is being trimmed to length, a short descriptor marked onto it in permanent marker and then a piece of clear heatshrink shrunk down over the marker. The clear heatshrink protects the writing and also magnifies it at the same time. Where several wires traverse the same path I am binding them together with braided shielding. The ends of the shielding are kept tidy with a piece of heatshrink.
On the starboad side of the aircraft I worked out where I wanted the positive feed from the battery to traverse the firewall and then fed the cable through. Things didn't go quite so well here as the cable, being routed in the duct already, had to go through a couple of interesting manoevres to get it to its final path. It was while doing this that I discovered that my left wrist is not as strong as 4 AWG aviation wire. An interesting crunch emanated from my wrist and there is now going to be a short interval before I use my left hand again.
Returning to the workshop in the evening, Stefan assisted me with getting the wire sorted out and it now takes a very gentle curved path from the cable duct to the firewall. I positioned the starter relay so that the cable would take a gentle 90 degree bend and terminate at the relay contact. I thought that I had every cable termination type in my bits box but not the ones that will fit the Rotax starter so I went online and order those. Just for reference, these are the large wire connectors I have needed so far...
If I was doing this again I wouldn't use aviation grade cable for the main power cable but use welding cable instead. The aviation grade cable is just to stiff at this diameter (and it can hurt both the pocket and wrist!).
11th June D'oh! I forgot that I had moved the RMI Microencoder to top centre of my panel - which means that it conflicts with the AFA cable termination box, so.... I remounted the termination box to the starboard side of the TCU immediately above my vent inlet. I'll leave the four nutplates that formed the mount in the original location with screws in them. I can probably use the lower two as cable clip holders. I ran some of the ground wires to may starboard forward ground point which is positioned on the back of the firewall. This is also the point at which the ground bus penetrates the firewall via a 5/16" brass bolt. A second forward ground point will exist on the port side of the firewall with a 10AWG wire linking the two while a third will be placed behind the aft bulkhead and will act as the ground point for the primary fuel pump, the strobe and the fuel flow sensor processor all of which are located aft.
12th June Mounted the 30A main alternator fuse on the front of the firewall. I am using a large format slow blow automotive spade fuse fitted into a rather nice holder available from Farnell Components. The 30A fuse looks like a standard automotive fuse on steroids.
13th June Did some experimenting with my current flow sensor. I am using a hall effect non intrusive sensor for this task. If I had been smart I would have put this on the main battery cable before I fed it through the ducting as this would have allowed me to have the sensor at the front of the plane. As it is the sensor module will now be sitting behind the aft bulkhead and yes, I need to run another pair of wires down the duct for it. Lesson #785... don't put tie wraps or sheaths around your cable bundles until you are certain all of the cabling is done.
14th - 17th June The wiring continues. It is interesting to note just how long each wire takes to terminate. I have a lot of experience with wiring and I reckon I'm lucky to do one end every 40 minutes by the time I have checked the length, labelled, heatshrunk, crimped, checked and documented each wire. I found a rather neat solution to the overflow bottle for the radiator. Farnell sell a range of polypropylene bottles. The 1/2 litre one just happens to be the same diameter as a large electrolytic capacitor so I mated the bottle with a capacitor base clamp and bolted it to the starboard side ledge. I have decided to bring the secondary battery forward and this is now located on the port side firewall ledge with all of the other electrical items for the secondary system. The RiteAngle main box was causing me a few headaches as it has no provision for mounting until I noticed that it is exactly the same size as the TCU. I added a couple of cork spacers to electrically isolate the two boxes and then strapped them together with tie wraps. The RiteAngle box is very light so adds very little momentum to the TCU box.
18th - 22nd June No building, working in the Hawkes Bay region.
23rd June A fine day, low mid winter sun, light breeze..... all adds up to sanding. Disappeared outside in a cloud of primer dust for a while.
24th - 29th June Continued with the wiring when I had spare time.
30th June Another lovely winter's day so it was back to the sanding. Target for the weekend is to have all the primer sanded back and to reprime any bits that need another coat. After eights hours of work most of the bits are ready.
