|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Last Modified November 10th 1997
October 1st - 13th No building, on holiday in England. I visited Europa and a couple of builders while I was away and made a couple of important decisions about the plane. I am bringing #272 as close to Europa XS specification as I can with a new tailwheel assembly and the bulkhead modification which increases the internal baggage space. I have also decided to fit a Rotax 914 and will be fitting this with the XS engine mount option which raises and moves the engine forward. The new cowlings supplied with the XS engine mount reduce front end drag and give a better fairing into variable pitch prop hubs and spinners.
October 14th - 17th Spent a bit of time trimming the starboard aileron flanges and counterbalance assembly but other than that I have been too busy to do much on the aircraft :-(
October 18th Cut out the port wing aileron counterbalance hole and filled in the lightening core. While doing this I noticed that the aileron was slightly misaligned with relation to the flange. The gap was only 2mm more at the inboard end than at the tip but I was in a fussy mood so I decided to fix it. I removed the hinge, made up two more hinges, riveted the nut plates onto the hinges and remounted the aileron so that the gap was constant. Happy now.
October 19th Finished off trimming the starboard wing counterbalance hole ready for laying up the cloth next weekend. Cut out the tip light mounting plates from one of my 4 bid glass sheets. These plates will be bonded into the tip layups to provide a mounting for the combined strobe and nav light units that I am adding. This is a custom addition to the aircraft and I have yet to fully work out the logistics of getting this working! Kim Prout in the US kindly supplied diagrams and basic instructions for accomplishing the task thought the final assembly is largely left to one's imagination.
October 20th No building
October 21st Checked the free movement of the port aileron and trimmed the counterbalance arm to give the required 25 degrees up and 22 degrees down. I was surprised as to how much I had to trim the arm to get the required downwards movement. Having done this I came to the conclusion that the time I spent several weeks ago patiently getting the arm to match the template supplied by Europa was largely wasted and that the only critical part was the area that matched the flange shape and the length. With the required movement set I trimmed the lead weight to match the arm and bonded the weight to the arm.
October 22nd Port Aileron. Laid up the first layers of cloth on the counterbalances. Each counterbalance arm has three layers of uni covering it and lapping back onto the aileron surface. Laying the cloth up on cling film and cutting it to shape before placing it on the piece made this a very simple job.
October 23rd Trimmed off the counterbalance layup.
October 24th Checked the alignment of the starboard aileron counterbalance then, once satisfied that there was enough movement, bonded the weight onto the arm.
October 25th - 27th First task for the weekend was to layup the starboard wing counterbalance holes and then laid up the first layers of cloth on the starboard aileron counterbalance arms. While I was waiting for that to set I did some work on the door latches. There is a fair bit of fettling to be done to the individual metal parts of the door mechanism and this kept me amused for the best part of an afternoon. The next day I finished off the aileron counterbalance arms by laying in two layers of bid on each side of the arms then it was back to the door bits. I shaped the door handle plates to resemble a symmetrical airfoil section and then shaped the door handles out of foam that I had bonded to the handle plate. Once I was satisfied with the shape I laid up two layers of bid over the foam. While sitting in front of the TV in the evenings I drew out the shape of my wing tips onto the foam provided. Europa give dimensions for the wing tips so it is a simple task to transfer the dimensions onto the foam. My last job for the long weekend was to rearrange the workshop so that I could work on rigging the flaps. The starboard wing is now lying horizontally on my workbench ready for flap mounting.
October 28th Trimmed back the counterbalance layups then mounted the port aileron onto the wing. The free movement meets the build specification (yaay!). In celebration I decided to have a play with the starboard aileron wing tip seeing as that wing is on the bench. I am having to diverge from the manual's build process here as the manual has you glue the tip block in place and then shape it. As I have to have access to the back of the block to create a cable channel for my tip light once I have shaped it I am going to have to shape the tip away from the wing. I temporarily fitted the wing tip to the wing with a strip of duct tape then cut the outer vertical shape with a hacksaw. To help me keep the cut outside the bit I wanted to keep I pushed pins into the foam along the underside line then sanded the surface back with a Permagrit sanding block keeping an eye on the upper line. As I hit the pins in the lower surface they dropped out of the foam giving me a clear indication not to sand any further. I must remember never to go into the workshop with bare feet! Once I had the outer vertical shape defined I took my tip block into the lounge to mark out my tip curve defining marks. The basic shape of the tip looking from the front will be a hemisphere and to create this I used the same technique that I used to define the stabilator tips.
To begin I draw a line dividing each of the three surfaces into two then repeat the process to divide the surface into four. These lines are actually curved as they travel along the airfoil shape but at any point along the tip the shape will be a hemisphere by the time I am finished! A line is cut at 45 degrees along the two outermost lines on each surface. A line is drawn mid way along each of the two faces and also drawn mid way along each of the two areas each side of the cut facets. Four new facets are then cut using these newly marked lines. The final shape is sanded using a #1 eyeball to keep everything in line. The diagram below, viewing the tip block from the front probably explains things better than I can ever put into words! The key thing is that you always divide each facet into two irrespective of the width of that facet at any point on the surface.
By the time I had marked out the tip it was time for bed so the tip shaping will have to wait until tomorrow.
October 29th Sanded my wing starboard wing tip to shape and reattached it to the wing. Amazing how much better a wing looks with the tip in place! I then spent more than a little time removing the masking tape from the wing flap plate metalwork. This proved to be trickier than I had expected as the resin on the wing overlapped the masking tape slightly and this had to be trimmed back very carefully in order to avoid scratching the metal.
October 30th No building, SAANZ meeting.
October 31st Drew out the tip cutting marks on the other wing tip and spent some time working out how I am going to attach the tip light support plates to the wing.
