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Last Modified December 1st 1997
November 1st I
had planned on calling this month Flapping Around until today. I
went down to my local builders yard and bought some 12mm particle
board with which to make my flap alignment jigs. I made up the
jigs in accordance with the instructions in the manual and bonded
one of them to the root of the starboard wing. The jig has an
area set into it where the flap will be located ensuring that the
flap is aligned horizontally and vertically with relation to the
wing. Once the bondo holding the jig to the wing had set I moved
my flap into position. Problem. The flap, even when it is placed
hard up into the closeout, will not fit within the slot allocated
for it in the jig. The allowance made for the root chord
including the flap with sufficient spacing for the flap to move
is 1270mm. With my flap hard up into the closeout my root chord
is 1275mm and I still need another 5mm of freedom. I spent quite
a bit of time checking my work and my measurements then gave up.
November 2nd - 4th No building. Off down country at a conference. Flying weather was superb.
November 5th Sent off a fax to Europa asking about my flap problem and took my frustration out on my wing by sanding back the resin that had built up under where I had peel plied the over the spar. This kept me well occupied for an hour.
November 6th Made up the clear plastic plates for the wing inspection panels. I am using 3mm clear lexan here rather than perspex as I find lexan easier to file without cracking.
November 7th No building - in laws over for the night.
November 8th The
picture to the left shows the general arrangement of the wing tip
light mounting. A glass layup made out of four layers of bid was
cut to the same size as the base of the wing tip light. Nut
plates were then riveted to the mounting plate to line up with
the screw holes in the wing tip light. An indent was made in the
wing tip to house the plate with the average depth of the indent
being around 5mm. This indent was positioned so that the strobe
light was positioned in line with the widest part of the tip,
also the widest part of the wing. As this happens to be the
centre of the spar getting this right was a simple task! On my
wing the distance (measured in a straight line) from the wing
leading edge to the the strobe centre is 38.9 cm with the front
of the indent being 31.7 cm from the leading edge. The centre
line of the indent aligns with the chord of the tip and this was
established with a tape measure. Foam was removed locally
underneath the nut plates and a small channel created along the
wide area to hold flox reinforcing. The edge of the indent was
sanded back to a 45 degree angle so that the glass would sit
properly at time of layup. Once I was happy with the indent I cut
out the keyhole shaped hole to house the position light and cable
connectors.
My cable duct emerges from the wing 31.7cm from the
leading edge so I opened up an area on the inside of the tip to
provide an easy route from the duct to the light. It is my
intention to terminate all of the wire in a single connector to
simplify assembly so I made sure I have enough space to house the
connector and enough wire to allow this connector to be brought
outside of the wing when required.
Satisfied that everything would work I spread flox over the underside of the plate, filled the groove around the edge and stuck the plate in place. I had a bit of flox left so I thinned it down and spread it over the inside of the hole to create a hard shell over the foam.
I should say that this mounting technique is not my own work and I thank Kim Prout, US builder #111 for the fax that he provided which shows the basic layup of the mounting plate. The indented mounting is more or less a copy of G-ELSA, now flying as the Europa USA demonstrator.
Now that the sub assembly was complete I turned my attention to the aileron. The aileron on this wing overlapped the edge of the wing by around 4mm so I sanded the tip back to line up with the wing. The other aileron only needs about 2mm trimming back at which point both ailerons will be the same length. I fixed the aileron into its neutral position, lined up with the wing surface, with hot melt glue. This provides a guide for the trailing edge of the wing tip which is very flimsy and prone to misalignment if it not supported during the layup. I cut a groove in the underside of the tip to provide an air gap between the lightening cores then bonded the tip to the wing with thick micro. The tip as supplied by Europa didn't quite match the profile of the wing in a couple of places so I ensured that the profiles matched at the leading and trailing edges and will sort the rest out tomorrow.
November 9th 1997 I sanded back one slight high spot on the tip foam, cut the cloth for both wing tips and then proceeded with the layup. Two pieces of bid were laid up with the cloth overlapping onto the wing surface by 4cm. Where the tip was lower than the wing profile I built the area up with micro to ensure a smooth transition. I masked off the aileron with masking tape which allowed me to run the cloth down the whole length of the tip and ensure that I had a good smooth surface. The two layers of cloth were laid over my tip mounting plate and, in order to prevent resin getting into the nut plates I placed very small pieces of cellulose tape over the holes. I peel plied the edges of the glass and also over the tip light plate area. To keep the glass sitting neatly in the tip light area I placed the mounting plate for the other wing tip over the peel ply and then pinned it in place with a long piece of dowelling jammed between in and the wall! When the layup reached soft leather stage I trimmed back the cloth over the aileron.
November 10th Heard back from Europa about my flap jig problem. The problem is not unknown and the key thing is to ensure a consistent 2-3mm gap between the face of the closeout and the flap tip. They also suggested that I maintain a straight line at the trailing edge in line with the aileron providing the edge of the flap doesn't get too thick. Off down the road to buy some 3mm thick plastic that I can cut into strips for assembly spacers.
I temporarily bonded two 3mm thick spacers into the closeout to match the inner and outer ends of the flap leading edge then repositioned the flap. I noted some resistance to the flap at the centre part of the closeout so I sanded the flange back a bit more to ensure that the flap was sitting in the closeout correctly. With the flap now sitting hard against the 3mm spacers the trailing edge at the root sat at 1278mm from the leading edge and the outboard edge sat exactly in line with the aileron. The fitting of the 3mm spacers into the closeout make the alignment job really easy and I certainly will be using this technique with the other flap. I checked the alignment of the flap plates. The outrigger and centre plates align perfectly and the inboard is misaligned against the wing plate by around 5mm. This misalignment is specifically catered for in the manual and is not an issue. Happy now that the flap can be mounted I dug out my box of nuts and bolts and made up a pack for each of the flap mounting assemblies.
November 11th Time to get the flap
mounted! I spent a bit of time ensuring that the flap really was
sitting where it was supposed to be then used hot melt glue to
fix it in place with relation to the wing, the aileron and the
root jig. I attached the W19 and W20 plates (nearest the camera)
to the flap plates using the diagrams shown in the manual. It is
interesting to note that the general construction diagrams and
the detail diagrams in the manual are in conflict as to which way
the bolt head should be placed for these hinges. I used the
detail diagram as my definitive guide. Once these were in place I
proceeded to cut the tufnol parts for the outrigger support and
fit the two outrigger plates together. This is a pain of
a job as the holes in the tufnol and in the centre metal plate
are really tight and I didn't really want to expand the holes too
much. After a considerable amount of persuading I managed to get
all of the pieces onto their respective bolts and I rather
suspect that if I ever want to remove them again it is going to
be with the aid of a hacksaw!. Luckily I had painted the
outrigger plates earlier so no further cosmetic finishing is
required on this subassembly. If I hadn't painted the plates I
would have had to stop construction until I had. With the sub
assembly made I fitted it between the two outboard W18 plates.
This is a tight fit but the assembly does slide between
the W18 plates. I am going to have to be very careful as to how
many coats of paint go onto the W18 plates however as it might
just get too tight. I needed to sand back a few high spots of
resin in order to get the hinge plates all sitting flat against
the wing surface.
The inboard hinge plate requires a slight bend to be
made in it as the flap plate and wing plates don't align. I
established the intersection point of the two plate surfaces and
worked out where to make the bend in accordance with the manual.
The bend line for my flap was quite close to the flap plate so I
checked to make sure I wouldn't be affecting the hinge motion. I
took the hinge plate to my vice then using a bit of brute force
bent the hinge plate to the required angle. I remounted the
inboard plate then attached all of the hinge plates to the wing
plates with clamps before cutting off the blobs of hot melt glue.
Grabbing the flap I pulled it back and was delighted with the
ease that it extended. There was a bit of rubbing against the
aileron at its greatest extension and I will fix that tomorrow by
sanding back the flap.
November 11th
One of the advantages of having a wedding anniversary so close to
Christmas is that you get to combine presents :-) My engine
management system has arrived! After reviewing most of the
systems around and comparing them feature for feature I decided
that the best value for money and best features came in the form
of the Audio Flight Avionics
AV10 voice alerting engine management system. This unit is
capable of constantly monitoring every engine function on the
aircraft and if anything goes out of parameter telling you about
the event through the aircraft's audio system! The AV10 comes in
two parts, the display and audio sender sits in the panel while
the black box sits on the firewall and terminates all of the
engine senders. A 25 pair cable connects the two. This is ideal
for the Europa with its removable instrument panel as I can
disconnect all of the engine instrument monitoring by undoing one
connector! I also purchased a separate four line display which,
in addition to the two line display built into the main unit will
allow me to constantly display important engine information (like
the RPM!). One other factor that led me to select the AV10 was
that Rod at Audio Flight Avionics was extremely helpful and gets
my 1997 customer service award. If only all equipment suppliers
were as good as Audio Flight Avionics!
Once I had stopped drooling over the AV10 I spent some time cutting back the inspection hole in my port wing.
November 12th Drilled some of the holes to link the flap plates to the wing. I used a tight fit drill kit sourced from Aircraft Spruce for this job and I must say it certainly made drilling the holes easy.
November 13th Drilled the rest of the holes. I have only used bolts on the outside pairs of holes in the outrigger assembly as it will certainly be removed later on.
November 14th Flipped the wing back over so that I could lay up the other side of the wing tip. Next time I will clamp the flap to the wing before I do this so that I won't have to repair a dent in the flap. Grizzle. Swarfed back the glass surface around the dent ready for a standard surface repair.
November 15th Laid up the wing tip. Assembled the bits for the outrigger assembly and tried them out in place. Part of the procedure for setting up the outrigger is the trimming of the central OR4 metal plate. When I came to work out how much to trim it just didn't look right as I would have had to trim off more than shown in the diagrams in order to get the plate to clear the wing surface. Rather than cut the plate back I have faxed Europa for comment.
November 16th Cleaned up the tip layup and flipped the wing back over again. This time the flap stayed in place. Cut the aileron push rods to length and then drilled out and riveted the rod ends in place. I made a very thin mixture of System Three metal primer, poured this into the rods and then laid them so excess primer would drip out. Once the drips had stopped I degreased the surface of the rods and primed the outside.
November 17th Trimmed up the wing tip and cut back the area around the end of the aileron to ensure enough clearance then prepared the foam for layup. Checked the primed rods. Interestingly enough I reckon the primer coat on these pieces is stronger than the other items I had primed with a thicker coat.
November 18th Heard back from Andy at Europa. It appears that there is a sentence or two missing in the manual...
"You will need to file a slot in the lower flange of the flap close-out to allow clearance of OR4 as it operates. This slot should not extend forward as far as the vertical skin of the close-out.
These sentences should be inserted into the second paragraph on page 9-22 after the first sentence.
After you have filed this slot you should find that you will not need to file away so much of the OR4 plate"
Having cut the slot I found out that I don't
actually need to file the plate away at all. The assembly of the
outrigger mechanism isn't that difficult to build up though it
did stretch my diagram reading capabilities at times as you have
to make sure that all of the bolts are assembled from the correct
side. Once everything was roughly assembled I tightened
everything up, clipped the springs in place and gave it a try.
Lowering the flap correctly extended the outrigger and then, with
an alarmingly loud bang, locked the outrigger into place.
Retracting the flap brought the outrigger back into place. I
checked the extension and latching position and confirmed that
the outrigger latches just before 20 degrees, well within the 25
degrees required as part of the setup. The flap can also freely
extend beyond the minimum 27 degrees required for the set up.
November 19th Having established correct operation of the flap and outrigger I rechecked the aileron. To my dismay I discovered that I didn't have sufficient downwards movement. I spent quite a bit of time working out why this would be so and came to the conclusion that the aileron flange had settled since I checked the movement when the wing was vertical.
November 20th I sanded back the upper flange as far as I felt comfortable with but still don't have enough movement.
November 21st No choice for it. I trimmed back the foam and lead on the counterbalance arms until I had 22 degrees freedom of movement. This should give me 20 degrees once I laid up the counterbalance surface again.
November 22nd Laid up the inside of the wing tip, the two aileron arms and the dent in the flap.
November 23rd Trimmed back the layups. The aileron now gives me 21.7 degrees of downwards movement. With the aileron now in place I dismantled enough of the outrigger assembly to allow the flap to swing the flap out of the way of the aileron end. I trimmed back the flange on the aileron to give enough clearance for the control arm and installed the control arm. Fitting the longer control arm that runs from the root is an interesting exercise. I found the easiest way was to have somebody else hold the root end then, with a piece of wire looped around the rod end behind the check nut, position the rod end against the socket and have your helper rotate the rod.
Once this was complete I brought the trailer with the fuselage over from the storage shed and took everything over to the shed. This coming weekend #272 will be on display at the "Big Boys Toys" show in Auckland and this was the only opportunity I had to get everything rigged on the trailer.
With the workshop now clear for the first time in over a year I had a clean up then did a bit of work on the remaining wing tip.
November 24th Continued shaping the wing tip.
November 25th No building.
November 26th Cut out the wing tip light housing within the wing tip
November 27th No building. Set up of the Big Boys Toys show.
November 28th No building. Sydney for the day.
November 29th & 30th No building. Big Boys Toys show. The crowd around the Europa on the SAANZ stand was unbelievable!!
