Last Modified December 1st 2003.

October 2003, In Memorium

In Memory of Mike and Nola Pickard, Aviators.

1st - 5th October My replacement TP5 tube for the stabilator arrived from Europa. First job was to golfball dimple the surface as I had done with the original tube as the bonding of the araldite to the tube shows that this is a very effective technique.

In order to ensure that the tube doesn't disbond from the foam again and to repair the damage to the surrounding foam that has already occurred I created six grooves within the foam surface surrounding the tube. Small holes were then drilled into these grooves through the outer glass and ply to allow me to inject epoxy glue. I'll only be able to access the top and bottom holes while I hold the tube in place with the torque tube very kindly lent to me by Rob Waters so this will be a multi stage repair job.

The idea is to first grease the torque tube well so that an araldite overflowing from the repair job won't stick to it. The TP5 will then be slid onto the torque tube and be well coated with araldite. The torque tube will then be slid into the hole and the TP5 positioned correctly. Once I am happy with the positioning the top and bottom injection holes will be flooded with araldite.

Once this is set the I'll (hopefully) extract the torque tube leaving the TP5 in place and then flood the remaining grooves with araldite.

6th -10th October Work got in the way of life again.

11th - 12th October At last, an entire weekend to work on the plane. Target for the weekend was to end up with two balanced ailerons. The ailerons as built are supposed to be over balanced requiring the removal of lead from the nose. Before I could balance the port one however I had to fit the aileron trim servo motor. Once I had located the motor and gone out and bought some 3mm countersunk machine screws and lock nuts it didn't take long to get the motor in place.

I suspended the aileron from two wires threaded through the hinge screw holes and found that this aileron was underbalanced requiring the addition of a little bit more lead. Off to the shops to buy some small fishing weights! I drilled a hole just behind the existing lead and slid in a total of 1.5 oz split between the two counter balance arms.

One interesting thing to note was that the centre reference line of the aileron does not pass through the leading edge. In order to work out where it is I measured from the leading edge of the hinge support tang to the top surface and divided it in half. A line was then run from the trailing edge to intercept this mid way point. When this line is level then the aileron is balanced.

With the fishing weights in place I filled the new hole with white silicone bathroom sealant.

The starboard aileron was overbalanced and required the removal of a fair amount of lead. I learnt early on that the easiest way of doing this is to create a number of medium sized holes, drill them very slowly and remove the swarf as soon as practical. A large drill bit grabs at both the lead and the outer glass which means that you may end up having to glue the glass back onto the lead but we're not going to talk about that.

Once the holes were drilled I once again filled them with white silicone bathroom sealant.

13th - 17th October Spent the evenings working on the code for my display panel

18th- 19th October The first fine weekend for over eight weeks so I disappeared to Pauanui

20th - 31st October My two neighbours were killed in the crash of their Tiger Moth over the weekend and I don't really feel like working on the aircraft right now.