Last Modified February 1st 2002

January 2002, Sand and Shine

1st - 2nd January First target for the new year was to finish the upholstery. I found that making the patterns for the smaller areas was a lot simpler if I just used duct tape in layers to make up the pattern rather than using wallpaper as I had before. The duct tape comes off the fiberglass surface quite easily and can then be stuck onto the cloth when cutting out.

I used one piece of cloth running across the baggage bay, down its front and extending onto the tunnel top. Side pieces covered the areas below the cable ducts and down along the floor to the centre tunnel while smaller pieces covered the sides of the tunnel. I also wrapped cloth around the tie rod.

A messy little job had to be done with the tie rod plates. When the original instructions that I was working with were written no mention was made of shortening the bolts and as a result my gusset plate support blocks are two centimetres inboard of the desired location. This means that only one of the two gusset plate bolts actually intecepts both the tube and the end fitting. To resolve this problem Europa supplied me with new longer plate material and I made these up into extended plates. I fitted these but have yet to drill the new holes through the rube as my 90 degree drill attachment inconveniently decided to die.

I originally was only going to use carpet under the feet of pilot and passenger but decided to run cloth across these areas as well. I'll have a couple of small mats made up and, as the cloth I have used is velcro receptive I'll back these with velcro hooks to attach them to the floor.

With the interior finished I sprayed all the cloth with Inspecta-Shield flame suppressant. Once saturated with this substance and allowed to dry the cloth becomes self extinguishing.

3rd January Fitted out the control column on the passenger side. Continued sanding and polishing

4th - 5th January Sanding and polishing. Muscle development is coming along well.

6th January Plumbed in the anti siphon bottle behind the baggage bay bulkhead and tidied up the wiring. Terminated the strobe wiring and... continued with sanding and polishing.

7th January More sanding and polishing

8th January Just a bit more sanding and polishing

9th January You guessed it, sanding and polishing

10th-11th January No building

12th January

After sewing up the joints along the tunnel top I terminated the wiring for the ELT panel and punched it through into the baggage bay. In these pictures you can see the extended arm support plates with the new outboard hole yet to be drilled.

13th January Made up the panel for the hour meter. This sits in the small space covered by the uncarriage lever when it is up but is visible when the gear is down.

I terminated the wires for the passenger side control column. This column only has a push to talk switch so it wasn't too big a job. Like the pilot's column, the wire is sheathed in a tube and brought into one of the bins under the seat.

I fitted the boots supplied by Tim Ward to both columns. These are made out of thin leather by Mr Leatherman of Christchurch and he has certainly done a very nice job with them.

Continuing the tidying up of the cockpit I tacked the cloth surrounding the tie rod in a few locations. I found that without the stitches in place the cloth would unwrap overnight.

I had been thinking about how to cover the ten holes that I had made along the duct to provide access to the wires within the duct. 

In the end I turned to the humble plastic milk container. The material that our containers are made of is a very light and flexible plastic. Each container provided enough flat surface to be able to make four 5.5cm diameter covers which were cut out with a pair of scissors. These were then speckle coated and had double sides carpet tape applied to the back.

Once in place these covers are barely noticeable as can be seen from the picture on the left where two cover plates can just be seen.

14th -20th January A concerted effort this week to tidy off the cockpit. The main item to be worked on was the wiring which needed a few connectors added. A sure sign of confidence (hopeless optimism?) was the fact that I finally tie wrapped the cable bundles on the firewall. 

The flap sensor supplied with my RiteAngle AoA sensor assumes that the flap has multiple positions and therefore uses a potentiometer as the sensor. In order to simplify construction I replaced this with a switch on the gear lever and made up the following circuit.

I put the fuselage up on blocks and tested operation of the gear once more. A year with the gear down has caused the bungee cord to stretch slightly so I took up the slack and shortened to cord by 10cm. I discovered that the microswitch used for the gear sensor was catching very slightly and needs a spacer to take it away from the top of the tunnel. As this requires two people to do this and both sons are otherwise occupied with summer activities this will have to wait a week or so.

The one bit of the stainless steel firewall that can be put into place before aligning the engine is the section on the starboard side so I put this into place. My intention was to reconnect the starboard rudder cable. Unfortunately I put the fittings from the end of the rudder arm in a really safe place... so safe in fact that I cannot find them!

I spent time in the evenings finishing off the layout for the radio panel and the lower switch panel. It was my original intention to put the compass on the overhead but in the end decided that it blocked the view too much and now have it placed in the radio panel. I have verified that the vertical card compass could have its offset moved enough to allow for the angle of the radio panel.

21st January No Building

22nd January I brought the engine back home from my friendly engineering firm courtesy of Carol's car. She did make a point of emphasising that the engine actually cost more than her current car and wasn't it time to get a new one for her. Expensive things these airplanes!

My engine was in good company during its little holiday away. When I went to pick it up it was resting between a Hawker Hunter and a Kittyhawk! I commented that the Hunter probably burnt more fuel in an hour than I would use in a lifetime in the Europa and they commented that it was also running out at 50 hours of maintenance for each hour flown!

The engine now has its vacuum pump gear fitted, the mandatory valve spring retaining modification done, the exhaust extension added and the temperature sensors changed for ones compatible with my engine monitoring system.

While it was in the workshop the engine was rotated in accordance with the preservation routine and had a good spray with WD40 to limit external corrosion.

Once the engine was back home I fitted the four exhaust gas temperature sensors and the secondary generator. I felt the best orientation for the generator was to have the cable come out on the underside on the port side. There has been quite a bit of discussion on the Europa group regarding electrical systems for the Rotax 914 with the consensus opinion being that this was an effective way of providing secondary power.

23rd - 24th January  Worked on the breaker panel and radio panel configuration.

25th January Dug out all of the control surfaces and worked out which bits needed respraying. I masked off all areas that didn't need working on and sprayed on two coats of paint. I have found that diluting Top Gloss with 5% water ensures that it goes on much better when using an HVLP sprayer in warm weather. When I was spraying before the paint was drying as soon as it hit the surface. With the paint thinner I can actually see a semi gloss finish as soon as I have finished spraying.

26th January Aaaaaaaaagh! For the touch up areas I used a new can of Top Gloss and this new can is not the same shade as the previous cans. Each of the surfaces I have used the paint on now has patches that are very noticeably different - and that includes the fuselage. I sanded back the area on the fuselage just to ensure that it wasn't an optical illusion but no, it's very definitely a different shade. I am now going to have to add another coat of paint over all the surfaces that I have touched up. 

There is an upside to all of this. Either Polyfiber have changed the formula, the addition of 5% water has made a difference or I have finally worked out the knack of spraying. Carol took one look at the fin and said that the tip looked fantastic. I have to agree, it has a lovely sheen to it, as do both of the flaps onto which I had applied a complete coat of  paint this time round. Carol can't work out why I would want to sand the surface back in an attempt to get the surface looking as shiny as it is now. While it isn't glass smooth the finish does look very nice and I am seriously tempted to keep it. No building.. too brassed off.

27th January  No building... rowing regatta season has started.

28th January They say that every cloud has a silver lining... in this case it's a lovely shiny rudder! 

I sanded back the new paint areas on most of the surfaces and at the same time discovered that I had a problem with the port stabilator's paint over it's tip. For some reason the paint wasn't adhering in this area and it easily peeled off. I pulled off as much as possible and sanded back the edges and the primer ready for repainting. All I can assume is that I had made the primer in this area too smooth and there was nothing for the Top Gloss to adhere to.

I had entirely repainted one side of the rudder and used this as a test to see how good the finish would come up if I did sand it back. Wow! Talk about good. I think the lesson here is that if it looks shiny after spraying then it's a lot easier to get a good looking finish.

I sanded the rudder side with 600, 1200, 1500, and 2000 grit then applied diamond cutter and  finish polisher. A three coat cleaner, glaze and carnauba wax  system from Mothers was then applied to bring out the shine. At last I have a finish that I am really (really) proud of. At close angles the surface is almost  a perfect mirror and from a distance it looks brilliant. It has taken a while but I have finally learnt how to get a good composite finish. Now all I have to do is respray the all of the control surfaces and fuselage then repeat the sanding and polishing process. Methinks I know what my builder's log will look like in February!

29th January At some stage of building a monowheel Europa you discover that the fuselage has to be self supporting. There are many designs of fuselage dolly around, this one came courtesy of builder A068. 

I had a local engineering shop make it up for me but the standard of workmanship was pretty lousy so it didn't quite work out according to the original design. It does the job it is intended to which is what counts. 

The entire assembly was made out of aluminium offcuts to keep the costs down.

The side supports for the undercarriage are made out of 40mm angle while the cross beam is 100 x 25 box. Not shown in the picture is a tab on the lower side of the cross beam which locates into the centre of the back curve of the undercarriage. The arms supporting the wheels are 100 x 25 solid bar and the wheels are original tailwheels from the Classic Europa.

The top pip pin is 5/16" and the lower pip pin is 1/4". The inboard faces of the side supports lined with tufnol. The design originally called for 3mm thick tufnol. Due to the fact that the guys who made this for me can't understand dimensions mine worked out at 6mm.

30th - 31st January This coming weekend is fuselage spraying day. 

I spent almost ten hours preparing the fuselage. This included masking off absolutely everything that wasn't going to be painted and going over the entire surface to check for defects in previous painting sessions. Once the minor defects had been fixed I sanded the entire surface of the aircraft with 240 grit and then washed it with Polyfiber alkaline cleaner. Once this had dried I brought the aircraft into the garage, masked off the undercarriage and tailwheel, then washed the plane down with prepwipe.