|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Last Modified August 5th 1997
July 1st Registered the trailer. Laid up the first surface on the starboard aileron. I must say that these new computer cut cores are superb. Every line is perfect and the overall finish of the cores is as good as I have ever seen on any kitset. I am finding cloth layups are getting easier all of the time. The aileron upper surface consisting of two layers of uni and a leading edge wrap around took me one hour and ten minutes from putting my tyvek suit on to walking out of the workshop. One thing that makes the job easier is the pair of right angle grass shears sent over to me by Tony Renshaw. These shears are designed for close trimming of grass and have the handles at ninety degrees to the cutting blades. They make very quick work of cutting back the edges of wet glass cloth.
July 2nd Trimmed back the edges of the layup. I had to use a hacksaw and sanding block on this one as there was no way I was going to get up at two in the morning to catch the soft leather stage. I may be an enthusiastic builder but I don't get out of my nice warm bed in the the middle of the night in winter for anything! Having trimmed back the edges I sanded off the trailing edge block and mounted the aileron and its jig on the bench prior to cutting out the cloth for the next layup. There were a couple of lumps of foam torn out of the root area when I removed the aileron from its first side layup and as these were at the edge of the piece I cut out square areas around the holes and epoxied in replacement blocks of foam. A couple of strokes with a permagrit blade soon had these blocks flush with the surface.
July 3rd Laid up the lower surface of the aileron
July 4th Cleaned up the layup and got the starboard 43mm wing block ready for laying.
July 5th Laid up the 43mm wing piece. I really don't enjoy this layup as it is a real pain getting the bid layup evenly on both sides and at the same time retain the metal wing plates in place. Bonded a strip of aluminium and peel ply onto the aileron where I will be undercutting the surface at the leading edge.
July 6th No building - went flying instead and had a total electrical failure! Should have stayed home and built instead.
July 7th Bonded the port aileron jig block to the bench. I would have finished the job but I ran out of double sided tape!
July 8th Finished the bonding job and then laid up the second surface of the aileron. To assist with the undercut that will be made later I laid in a piece of 1 inch wide blue peel ply where the flange will be. The Europa supplied peel ply is just the right size for the flange. Once the layup was complete I laid a 2 inch wide piece of peel ply over the flange area in preparation for bonding on an aluminium straight edge.
July 9th Cleaned up the layup and bonded aluminium L plates along the flange edges.
July 10th Cut out biaxial cloth for the wing layups and all of the bid pieces for the wing and aileron layups. I rolled up the biaxial cloth (which is 3.4 metres long by 63cm wide) onto dowelling in order to keep it straight. To keep the pieces clean I wrapped the rolls in cling film.
July 11th No building
July 12th As
the humidity was too high for fibreglassing I finished off a few
metalwork jobs that I had laying about. One of these was
completing the fuel tank outlets. The finger screens were bonded
into the outlets with Redux then later in the day I soldered the
brass screen ends to the copper drain pipe. I found that securing
the ends of the screen to the copper tube to be difficult until I
came up with the idea of stripping some multicore wire, wrapping
that around the end of the screen to keep it neat and then
applying solder. The multicore wire very effectively acted as a
solder wick and made for a very neat job. Each of these fittings
has two outlets, one for the main fuel feed and the other, via
the long copper pipe, for the fuel drains which are mandatory for
aircraft built in New Zealand.
I cut back the foam underneath the flange edges and removed the peel ply to end up with a nice clean flange area. I also pumped up the main landing wheel tyre for the first time - that is one big tyre!
July 13th Laid up the leading edge bid on both ailerons. As with most of my closeouts I laid up the first layer onto cling film on the bench then carry the piece to the work and feed the sticky piece into the closeout. Once it is in position I remove the cling film and squeegee it out. The remain pieces are laid in dry and do require a bit of patience to keep the bid in shape. The two closeouts took exactly two hours to complete.
July 14th Sanded back the flange edges then removed the aluminium brackets before removing all of the peel ply. Once this was done I cut out the foam from the tip and root flanges. The peel ply I placed over the flange areas made made this a simple job but it was still longer than the five minutes that the manual states for this job!
July 15th Laid up the tip flanges. This is an easy job requiring just two layers of bid to be laid up.
July 16th Cut back the flange layup. My technical advisor Alistair McLachlan came round and checked my work to date. He gave me a big thumbs up for attitude and work quality. Now that he has checked out the aileron bellcranks I will proceed with bonding the trailing edge cores to the wings. We spent some time discussing the wing construction and he recommended that the aileron push rod channel that runs just rear of the spar be glassed along its whole length. The instructions only have you glass the first thirty or so centimetres in from the root. The primary reason for doing this was experience with a LongEZE some years ago that had a fuel leak. The fuel managed to get under the glass at one point which proceeded to dissolve the foam. Two days later the structure collapsed and the plane had to be written off! Alistair felt that covering the foam along the tunnel could be a wise move and doesn't really add a lot to the weight or build time.
We also discussed the design of the Europa tank which is supplied pre moulded complete with connecting bosses. What it doesn't have however, is a method of inspecting the tank or any method of extracting and foreign objects which may find their way in there. What is more, once the aircraft is assembled, there is no way of removing the tank without cutting the aircraft apart. A couple of UK builders have designed a modification to the tank which adds an inspection hatch, provides a convenient location for mounting a capacitance fuel gauge, and is PFA approved. I have these details and now, having discussed the design with Alistair, will be going ahead with the tank modification.
July 17th Having thought a bit about the aileron tunnel I have come to the conclusion that it probably doesn't need glassing as all that I am protecting against is fuel and solvent damage. I made up a thin micro slurry and applied this to the inside of the tunnel. This will seal off the foam and create a thin resin layer to act as a barrier.
July 18th The micro slurry did the job in the tunnels and they now have a good even lining of resin.
I cut out the templates for the rear bulkhead and
transferred the pattern to the piece of 5mm foam supplied for
this purpose. I cut the pattern out then made up the wood and
metal inserts that are located within the foam. The metal insert
provides the primary fixture point for the tail wheel and the
wooden one provides a fixing point for the trim tab servo motor.
In order to ensure that the bulkhead stayed flat I placed it on a
plastic surface (aka a big black rubbish bag), floxed the inserts
in place, laid up the two layers on bid on top and then covered
the whole layup with peel ply before weighing the whole thing
down with a big piece of particle board. (I apologise for the
fuzzy pictures - I left the camera on macro by mistake)
July 19th The board and peel ply came off easily leaving me with a very flat bulkhead. I trimmed up the edges a bit then flipped the piece over and laid up two pieces of bid. I didn't bother with the board this time as the layup was very stiff at this stage. The markings on the plywood insert show the location of an elongated hole that will be drilled later for the torque tube push rod to pass through.
Bonding the rear foam cores to the spar was always
going to be entertaining! I removed the cores and their wooden
support bars before mixing up a big pot of micro and a smaller
one of flox. The flox was applied to the rib flanges and micro
applied along the ribs and on the base of the cores. I squidged
(technical term) the cores into place, reattached the wooden bars
and ensured that the alignment marks at the tip and root did in
fact align before leaving the lot to cure overnight.
July 20th With the cores bonded to the spar it is no longer necessary to have the wing jigged. I removed the wooden support bars then cracked the support blocks off the floor and the wing. The root block hit my nicely positioned reference bar as it came off, which promptly fell on the floor. I will reattach it after I have done the rest of the layups. Realigning it will be an easy job as all it needs to be is parallel to the wing reference marks - a simple task with a digital spirit level. With the help of a skateboard acting as a steerable truck I swapped the two wings over and then bonded the port wing to the floor.
While the bondo was setting I trimmed back the glass on the rear bulkhead to within 3mm of the foam all round and put it away for another day and then bonded the port wing 43mm core to the middle wing core. Fifteen minutes spent on sanding back the wing cores to take the flap attachment plates had all of the port wing cores ready for positioning on the wing.
The aileron roots require a metal insert and nut to
be inserted into the cloth. Luckily (well maybe not) I already
have some experience at doing this so, with the first layer of
cloth laid up into the root, I laid up two pieces of cloth on
cling film with the nut inserted at the right position. When the
cloth was wetted out I placed another piece of cling film over
the top with the nut pushed through the film. A quick flip over
and repositioning of the layup onto a foam block with a hole to
accommodate the nut gave access to the metal plate for
application of flox before carrying the layup to the aileron. It
was easier to forget about accurately placing the nut until the
cloth is fed into place and trimmed to size. Once the cloth
looked good I carefully positioned the nut then repeated the
whole process with the second aileron. Before leaving the layups
to set I double checked (actually I did it five times) the
position of the nuts. It is really important to get these the
same as any discrepancy between the two sides, even by just a
millimetre, will result in differential operation of the
ailerons.
As an aside...how many people realise that the aileron was invented by a New Zealander? Richard Pearse, who it is claimed actually flew before the Wright Brothers, invented the aileron. In his own words "I can lay claim to the invention of the aileron, invented by me in 1902 and patented in 1904. The Wright brothers developed a 'warped wing' to carry out the same function, making it perform more like a kite. My objective has been to show that New Zealand brains anticipated the essential features of the aeroplane". Richard Pearse's first authenticated flight was on the 31st March 1903. It was the sixth powered takeoff in the world.
The root layups only took about an hour so I went back to my first wing, taped each side of the lightening core slots, made up some micro with the resin left from the aileron root layups, and filled the slots.
The port wing cores proved to be an earlier job to
position that the starboard cores and only required a small
number of foam wedges in order to get them to align correctly.
Having got the blocks aligned I nailed on the wooden supports and
left them for a while to let the epoxy on the foam wedges to set.
It is a pity that you have to apply micro between the cores otherwise it would be possible to simply leave the wooden support blocks in place, micro the base and place the whole assembly back on the wing! As it was, I removed the support blocks, took the wing cores off and repeated yesterday's core attachment process before taking my pet alligator for a walk (you have to have the builders manual to understand that one!). As a tip, don't put too much micro on the cores when bonding them. I put too much on the tip core and it was still oozing out of the sides an hour later!
All told I only spent around seven hours working on the plane this weekend yet I seem to have accomplished a lot. I now have two wings that actually look like wings and all of the control surface main layups complete. It is really satisfying seeing the plane come together like this and I definitely feel that progress is being made.
July 21st Cracked the wing jig from the floor and broke away the wing from the jig. I found that a swift kick at just the right place on the jig very cleanly parts the bondo from the wing surface. Of course you only find this out when you actually come to do it the last time!
July 22nd Prepared the port wing for filling the slots then spent the rest of the evening getting the workshop ready for my open day on Saturday.
July 23rd Filled the wing port wing slots and then continued with workshop open day preparation.
July 24th No building. I did however assemble a few of my instruments and my Exp Bus to show visitors how easy it can be to wire up and instrument panel.
July 25th The great homecoming. I brought the fuselage up to the house from the storage shed for the first time so it can live in the garage overnight. Tomorrow it is going to sit outside the front of the house all day and convince the neighbours that I really have gone nuts. It sure feels great to have it sitting in the garage at last.
July 26th Europa open day in Auckland. ZK-TSK went on show for the first time. The reaction from passing drivers to the plane sitting on the driveway was very amusing. I am amazed that there were no crashes! Around 40 homebuilders turned up over the afternoon and the aircraft received many favourable comments. Once everything had settled down I took the fuselage back to the storage shed and upon return spent a bit of time applying peel ply to the wing ready for next weekend's layups.
July 27th Yet another "quick" job that took two hours! I finished off applying peel ply to the lower trailing edge surfaces. The manual does not document this at all but I feel that it is important to use peel ply wherever two glass surfaces will meet. In the pictures shown above you can see where ply was applied. In the first picture the higher area is the aileron section of the wing and the ply is applied over the area where the underlying foam will eventually be cut away. The lower area and the second picture show the flap area of the wing. The line (and the word "cut") show where this section will eventually be cut off. Below the cut line is an area where the foam will be removed under the skin. The second picture also shows blue peel ply applied over the area where the root flange will be created. In the pictures you can also see the grooves cut each side of the ribs where flox corners will be made as well as the foam shims I inserted in the gaps behind the flap plates. I inserted these shims in order to provide some support for the skin during the layup. To finish off the preparation I masked off the forward section of the wing to prevent resin messing up my previously completed surface.
With the wings now ready for the next layup I
returned to my ailerons. I assembled the hinges and then marked
up and cut out the hinge rebates on both ailerons before marking
out the rivet hole locations on each of them.
The port hinges were then clamped onto a straight edge at the correct location and positioned up against the aileron flange. I found I had to sand a little extra off the rebates in order to ensure that the hinge pivot point was coincidental with the edge of the flange. Once satisfied with the position I drilled out 3.3mm holes using clecos to keep everything in place. With all the holes drilled I removed the clecos and countersunk the glass to take the rivets. Four of the rivets on each hinge are located very close to the V of the flange with insufficient depth under the flange to position the rivet head. I drilled through the glass on the undercut area in order to accommodate the rivet head and will fill these holes with flox once the rivets are pulled.
July 28th - 31st Not a lot of building due to the fact that we are moving Kaon Technologies this coming weekend and have the new office to prepare. I did get some of the metalwork prepared for alodyning however.
