|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Last Modified March 31st 1997
March 1st Cut the lightening hole cores for all of the starboard wing blocks and epoxied them in place. Humidity is sitting at 93 percent so there is no chance of doing any glass work. Cleaned up the workshop and moved the spare foam out to my storage shed.
March 2nd The humidity hasn't dropped which is becoming quite frustrating. I cut back and sanded the aileron bellcrank area in the starboard trailing edge pieces and made all of the vent holes in the starboard wing blocks. I use a piece of metal rod heated with a miniature blow torch to make the vent holes. I checked the level of my wing spar in the vain hope that I will be able to do some glassing soon and actually bed the cores to the spar. There had been a bit of movement - no doubt due to temperature variances - so I relevelled the spar and it is sitting comfortable a 0.0 degrees right along its length. I now have all of my port cores glassed and ready for layup, a port aileron complete, almost a port flap complete and all of my starboard foam cores ready for laying up ribs. As soon as the humidity drops I will fit the port leading edge blocks to the spar and finish off the starboard ribs and control surfaces before doing the big wing layups. The main reason for holding off the wing layups at this stage is the temperature. In the middle of the day it is sitting around 26-27 Celsius and the resin goes off very quickly. The other (and probably main) factor is that wearing my tyvek suit for six hours in this heat will probably result in heat stroke and dehydration!
March 3rd No building
March 4th Fixed the damaged flap flange. I laid in a piece of bid just longer than the dipped area, laid a longer piece of uni along the flange with the cloth direction parallel to the edge then finished off with a piece of bid to match the first. Once happy with that I then bedded the FL2 plate into the centre of the flap. To line up the FL2 plate I stuck pieces of wooden stirrers with 1/6" holes drilled and centred on the plate holes onto the FL1 and FL3 plates. I then ran a piece of string through the small holes and through the FL2 hole and pulled it tight to give a guide line. The FL2 plate was bedded into place with flox and then bonded with hot melt adhesive to a wooden block in order to keep it in place while the flox set.
March 5th Checked and cleaned up the flap plate and my repair. The repaired area looks really good and my flap plates are all in line.
March 6th Prepared the remaining starboard foam blocks for rib layup.
March 7th The humidity was too high again today so I occupied myself with cutting out the remaining uni cloth parts and the bid for the wing ribs. I found out that I was 2.7 metres of uni cloth short. I don't know how this happened as I haven't really been excessive with the cloth. I am going to pick up some more from Europa in Lakeland when I am at Sun 'n Fun next month.
March 8th Laid up the remaining starboard forward rib and both of the starboard rear ribs and plates. I was going to layup the 43mm core as well but found out that my 43mm core was actually 45mm wide. Seeing as I have to precisely position the two side plates 45mm apart and have to lay in two layers of bid each side of the core before putting plates in place that the core was just too wide. Time to speak to the factory.
March 9th I spoke to Roger at Europa and he recommended that I sand back the core to 43mm wide. I will get my woodworking wizard to make me up two 43mm high wood blocks so I can do this cleanly. No building.
March 10th - 13th No building - too much work.
March 14th Finished sanding back the ribs.
March 16th I finally got around to the job I had been dreading! I bonded the port leading edge blocks to the spar today. The first thing I did was to bond pieces of angle aluminium onto the root and tip pieces lined up with the alignment marks provided on the pieces. These pieces of aluminium provide a stable platform for my spirit level when checking the alignment of the block.
The next stage was to check the alignment of the blocks before final bonding. I attached a couple of lengths of 50 x 25 MDF board to the sides of the cores. The MDF board has no grain and is manufactured dead straight so it provides a very good alignment for the pieces.
I used 60mm nails to attach the MDF the boards to the root and tip pieces first. I shimmed up these pieces to get the alignment correct and then attached another piece of MDF to the tip. With a good reference now established I shimmed up the centre block until I had established a good and true leading edge.
With the setup now established it was time to get the sticky stuff out. I removed the boards and blocks from the spar and made up a cup each of dry micro, thick flox and thin flox. I applied micro to base of the root piece and flox to the rib wrap around area and then put it in place and shimmed it up to the correct alignment. I then repeated the process with the central block and, having applied thin flox to the lighting duct, fed the duct through the hole and bedded to block onto the spar. The procedure was repeated a third time with the tip core having used a piece of thin dowel inserted into to the duct to make it easier to feed it through the guides which I glued in place earlier. I reattached the wood strips using the holes established during the dry layup and checked that they were straight with my metal straightedge. At this point I got a bit paranoid and repeatedly checked the end alignment, leading edge straightness and surface alignment until I was completely satisfied that I had done the best job that I was capable of. The gap between the top surface and the spar at the root where I had shimmed it to ensure the correct washout was wide enough to be filled with micro applied with a syringe so I got busy and filled the gap.
March 17th First the good news. The wing core setup turned out looking very good. With the support rails removed, the cores look great.
Now the bad news. Over the past week or so there have been discussions on the Europa news group about aileron washout. It appears that a few people have had problems with incorrect washout when following the build procedure given in the manual. I measured my port aileron at 1.4 degrees of washout, close to twice the required (but undocumented) 0.8 degrees. I discussed the matter with Roger at Europa who faxed me a new aileron build procedure and subsequently agreed to supply me with a new core so I could remake the port aileron.
I will use the, now scrap, port aileron to test my surface finishing skills and to see how System Three coatings handle continuous outside exposure.
March 18th No building.
March 19th Spent a bit of time cleaning up the wing spar ready for the surface layup. I also sanded the "43mm" core piece back to a real 43mm on advice from the factory.
March 20th - 22nd No building, computer show time.
March 23rd I had planned on laying up the 43mm rib piece today but, you guessed it, the humidity is too high. Not from cyclones this time but from a rather spectacular thunder storm. The humidity had dropped by mid afternoon to the point where I could work with resin but I didn't have enough time to do the rib layup. To keep myself occupied I applied dry micro to the slots and dings in my wing. I checked with my technical advisor with Europa experience if there was any reason to prevent me doing the dry microing before the main layup. He advised (as advisors do) that he couldn't see any reason providing I kept the micro away from any glass to glass surfaces. The dry microing took just over an hour which is an hour cut off the big wing layup coming up soon.
March 24th I had a look at the wing this morning. There are a couple of places where I will have to give the micro a light sand but the rest of it looks fine. The replacement metal parts for the port aileron arrived today. Great service from Europa. I also received the revision 4 manual updates. There are very few changes that affect me so far. The most noticeable one being that they now advise a resin mix tolerance of 1-2% and acknowledge that the resin supplied has a finite shelf life. In order to keep within the shelf life of my hardener I need to use it by the end of May. The local RS Systems office here in Auckland (composite yacht capital of the world) advised me that they can test the hardener and resin once the shelf life has expired to see if it can still be used. Spent half an hour this evening sanding tidying up the wing and cleaning up the bench prior to getting the starboard aileron ready for layup. The new layup procedure includes jigging the block tip up by a few millimetres to remove all washout and then twisting it back down by 2mm to ensure that the washout is the correct 0.8 degrees. This means you end up with a small block under the tip to correct the excessive washout built into the block as supplied. I suspect that this procedure won't be required in the future as Europa have now installed a computer controlled foam cutter which removes the variances which inevitably occur with hand cut blocks.
March 25th - 26th No building. Too much work L
March 27th Glued the starboard aileron jig to the bench. The revised procedure only takes around 20 minutes to ensure the correct 0.6 degree washout. As can be seen from the picture below, taken after the layup and before trimming there was a fair amount of shimming required to reduce the washout to 0.6 degrees.
March 28th Laid up the top surface of the starboard aileron. This was a simple job with only two layers of uni required.
March 29th - 31st Easter. Brilliantly fine weather and light winds so I went and explored the central North Island and the volcanoes by plane. This country really is an aviator's paradise. Miles of uncontrolled airspace with a great, and GA friendly, airways service providing search and rescue monitoring. The scenery around the middle of the North Island really is spectacular with its snow capped (and ash covered!) volcanoes reaching up above 9500 feet, its bush clad hills and its massive man made forests. Another notable event - the ship carrying my fuselage kit docked on the 29th.
